fmt

u can type in crow.toml something like [dependencies] fmt = { git = "https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt" }. crow will clone the repo and will try to find crow.toml in it. cant find? so, crow will use wheels (from the word "wheelchair". it's like a fallback mechanisms) — if there's cmake files — CmakeWheel will be used - it will call cmake -B out_dir -S root (not exactly this command, by you get it), build static lib. and next crow will link your crow project with your non-crow dependency unfortunately there's no os specific commands for now but i will implement them as soon as i finish writing the docs

The least painful C/C++ build tool I've used is xmake https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake The reason why I like it (beyond ease-of-use) is that it can spit out CMakeLists.txt and compile_commands.json for IDE/LSP integration and also supports installing Conan/vcpkg libraries or even Git repos. set_project("myapp") set_languages("c++20") add_requires("conan::fmt/11.0.2", {alias = "fmt"}) add_requires("vcpkg::fmt", {alias = "fmt"}) add_requires("git://github.com/fmtlib/fmt v11.0.2", {alias = "fmt"}) target("myapp") set_kind("binary") add_files("src/*.cpp") add_packages("fmt") Then you use it like # Generate compile_commands.json and CMakeLists.txt $ xmake project -k compile_commands $ xmake project -k cmake # Build + run $ xmake && xmake run myapp

It is possible to compress the table using the technique from Dragonbox (https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/blob/8b8fccdad40decf68687ec038...) at the cost of some perf. It's on my TODO list for zmij.