When comparing CMake vs Waf, the Slant community recommends CMake for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source build systems for C/C++?” CMake is ranked 2nd while Waf is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose CMake is:
This way everyone can use their favorite IDE in order to develop CMake, Code Blocks, qtcreator, Visual Studio, (and more).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Compatible with different IDE's
This way everyone can use their favorite IDE in order to develop CMake, Code Blocks, qtcreator, Visual Studio, (and more).
Pro Built-in, cross-platform dependency finding
Pro Out-of-the-box GUI available
CMake comes with the fantastic ncurses GUI ccmake
out of the box. Large codebases including WeeChat use it, to the point that the developer never needs to touch CMake code, but it is highly readable if he wishes to examine it.
Pro Written in Python
You don't have to learn a domain specific syntax. If you know Python, it's a breeze.
Pro File changes are tracked based on a hash of their changes not the time stamp
This means that switching branches in git isn't a big deal.
Pro Very fast
Much faster than its predecessor SCons.