Right like I said some build tool can improve your productivity wrt to some other build tool. But did it create any absolute value in the end product?
Let's say you first build your product with autotools and you sell it for X$ per unit. If you later port your application to CMake. What value does CMake create in the end product? Can you sell it for more than X$ on the basis of having been built with Cmake? Usually no. The build system created 0 absolute value gain. You can claim that oh.. CMake is simpler than autotools and will save some time in the future thus creating a gain relative to autotools. Yet it's not capable of generating absolute value added. In absolute terms every build tool can only retract effort away from the activities that produce the value, i.e.software features.
> What value does CMake create in the end product? Can you sell it for more than X$ on the basis of having been built with Cmake? Usually no.
That is true for every technological choice.
> In absolute terms every build tool can only retract effort away from the activities that produce the value, i.e.software features.
Again you seem to think that build systems don't contain software features. I don't think that this is true. My build system helps me to refactor things that I would have to do by hand otherwise, and which are pretty project-specific. For instance scanning subprojects for their license information and generating a .cpp with that info, looking for all uses of a particular token and listing the files using that token for them to be included somewhere, etc etc.
Let's say you first build your product with autotools and you sell it for X$ per unit. If you later port your application to CMake. What value does CMake create in the end product? Can you sell it for more than X$ on the basis of having been built with Cmake? Usually no. The build system created 0 absolute value gain. You can claim that oh.. CMake is simpler than autotools and will save some time in the future thus creating a gain relative to autotools. Yet it's not capable of generating absolute value added. In absolute terms every build tool can only retract effort away from the activities that produce the value, i.e.software features.