I would happily switch to it in a heartbeat if it was a lot more well-documented and if it supported even half of what CMake does.

As an example of what I mean, say I want to link to the FMOD library (or any library I legally can't redistribute as an SDK). Or I want to enable automatic detection on Windows where I know the library/SDK is an installer package. My solution, in CMake, is to just ask the registry. In XMake I still can't figure out how to pull this off. I know that's pretty niche, but still.

The documentation gap is the biggest hurtle. A lot of the functions/ways of doing things are poorly documented, if they are at all. Including a CMake library that isn't in any of the package managers for example. It also has some weird quirks: automatic/magic scoping (which is NOT a bonus) along with a hack "import" function instead of using native require.

All of this said, it does work well when it does work. Especially with modules.

actually looks very similar to Meson [https://mesonbuild.com/], which is getting a lot of traction in FOSS [https://mesonbuild.com/Users.html]

e.g. from their docs:

  project('sdldemo', 'c',
          default_options: 'default_library=static')
  
  sdl2_dep = dependency('sdl2')
  sdl2_main_dep = dependency('sdl2main')
  
  executable('sdlprog', 'sdlprog.c',
             win_subsystem: 'windows',
             dependencies: [sdl2_dep, sdl2_main_dep])

Similar to premake I have never been a fan of the global state for defining targets. Give me an object or some handle that I call functions on/pass to functions. CMake at some point ended up somewhat right with that to going to target based defining for its stuff and since I've really learned it I have been kinda happy with it.

Agreed, xmake seems very well-thought-out, and supports the most modern use-cases (C++20 named modules, header unit modules, and `import std`, which CMake still has a lot of ceremony around). I should switch to it.

I've had some experience with this but it seems to be rather slow, very niche and tbh I can't see a reason to use it over CMake.