A practical look at common CMake mistakes that make build configuration fragile: overloaded CMakeLists.txt files, manual compiler flags, ignored CTest infrastructure, unnecessary custom logic, and global commands that break target boundaries.

Build Windows binaries from Linux without maintaining a full Windows build environment. MXE + Docker setup, toolchain builds, and shipping DLL dependencies.

Precompiled headers are a powerful way to reduce compilation time in C++ projects. The best part is that modern CMake supports them out of the box. In this article, I’ll show you how to set up your CMake project to take advantage of precompiled headers.

Practical techniques: forward declarations, moving implementations to cpp, and PIMPL — explained with real examples.

One major factor that can slow down compilation is headers. When they are too heavy or included in every translation unit, they can significantly increase compilation time.

If your C++ project takes minutes to compile, guessing won’t help.
Learn how to measure real compile-time costs, analyze JSON reports, and find the most expensive headers and templates using the right tools.