Understanding the Purpose Behind CMake

Question

I am trying to understand the purpose behind CMake. Why it is designed like it is right now. Here are some questions I would like to have answered.

• Why does cmake

Answer 1

Since jmstoker gave already a very complete answer, I'll focus on this specific point:

"Why do tutorials advise me to list every source file explicitly?"

In practice you can use globbing functions, however the problem is that if you add a file, then you have to run cmake explicitly to make cmake aware of its presence. It's usually not a problem if you are working "alone", but in a shared project it can be a problem if somebody add a file, you update, and then you compile facing strange errors.

With git there is a solution, that allow triggering "cmake ." every time a merge happens. Getting cmake to run before building after pulling from git