Switching from autotools to CMake

January 7, 2021

Switching to CMake from autotools or plain Makefiles gives generally better support of many operating systems, in particular Windows. Another benefit is generally faster speed of configuration and build. In 2020, MonetDB switched from autotools to CMake. They observed MonetDB with CMake builds in 40% of the original time. Note also the improvement due to Ninja instead of GNU Make.

We have converted a number of projects from autotools to CMake. Consider automated autotools to CMake script and then manually compare or redo by inspection of the autotools scripts.