[jan-jaap]

I understand why people use it, but I still think it's incredibly unfriendly for command line usage [...]  Autoconf is just ./configure, if the script is set up.

With CMake it's just

Code:

cmake .

if the script is set up...

Autoconf was good for configuring projects between various (commercial) UNIX versions and UNIX like systems. It isn't good at all for almost everything else. Creating the macros requires knowledge of M4 and Perl. The commercial UNIXes have all gone the way of the dodo so it's solving a problem that no longer exists. Portability in 2024 means it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux (if you're lucky). If you're starting a project in this day and age and you hope to support Windows and macOS (and why wouldn't you, it's 90+ % of the market), Autoconf is a poor choice, and CMake isn't.