When comparing CMake vs GNU Make, 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 GNU Make is ranked 3rd. 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 Uses the full power of the UNIX shell
Make takes advantage of the powerful UNIX shell, using it at it's full potential. STDIN and STDOUT are especially useful because of their versatility.
Pro No need for wrapper modules
Other build tools need wrapper modules to do certain tasks. The biggest disadvantage of these wrapper modules is that they bind you to a version of that tool. With Make you don't have that problem, there's no need for wrappers and no tools to bind you to a version, you can use any version of Make that you want.
Pro Works with more than just node.js
Since it's written in C and can be found in all UNIX-based systems it can be used on platforms other than node.js.
Cons
Con Uses own language
Con Doesn't run on Windows by default
Make requires Cygwin/msys2/MinGW to run on Windows.