Hi, cc'ing those who've been involved with the CMake tool recently. I've been looking at part of the Git-for-Windows (GfW) Visual Studio build process that uses the CMakeLists.txt approach [A,B], which is based on the git.git version. In part it's now, for an uninformed user, broken, in an awkward way, hence the subject line question. An uniformed user is expected to clone git, download Visual Studio, and file-open the /git directory. Visual Studio will then find the CMakeLists.txt and create a hidden .sln/.vcproj project ready to build. In recent times Visual Studio has added the Ninja build generator, in addition to it's historic visual studio generator, and made Ninja the default (unless specifically configured otherwise e.g. [1]). This change of generator breaks the detection of being in Visual Studio (using Win32 and MSVC flags). We used these flags as a cue to pre-load the vcpkg libraries, but no longer. Also note Visual Studio embeds its own CMake version. One issue for creating an update is that the CMake file is meant to be OS independent, and the Ninja generator is also OS independent, so shouldn't be used as the indicator of working with Visual Studio. Likewise using the Win32 CMake flag isn't appropriate for those not using Visual Studio. So the issue, as best I see it, is how to decide when to pre-load the vcpkg libraries needed for the build. The CI for the git.git test of CMake preloads it's essential pre-requites (as an informed user;-) so avoids those Visual Studio changes to it's defaults. The ultimate aim is to make it as simple as possible for GfW users to browse the Git code, without feeling that they have taken the developer/contributor commitment step, which appears to scare off some users. Part of that simple usage is that existing Visual Studio support tools can expect .sln/.vcproj files to be available to 'just work' out of the box. In particular (for me) Sourcetrail [2,3], with it's easy graphic visualisation and tracing through the code, is one target. Sourcetrail isn't quite there yet but..[4] This issue is tricky to test as it (pretend to be that inexperienced user) expects a clean VS install and no vcpkg prior install. I could be totally confused (I am feeling rather dumb on this one), but I'd be grateful of any help in clarifying a way out for detecting if the conditions are right to pre-load the vcpkg libraries. I've also raised an issue at [5] -- Philip earlier discussions at https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/discussions/3176 [A] https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/contrib/buildsystems/CMakeLists.txt [B] https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/blob/main/contrib/buildsystems/CMakeLists.txt [1] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cmake-tools/issues/1084 [2] https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail [3] https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/wiki/Sourcetrail-code-viewer-and-linkage-to-Visual-Studio,-for-Git [4] https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail/issues/1179 [5] https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/cpp-docs/issues/3167
