Ok, my turn now. Let's build the project 'msdfgen' using cmake.
First step is cloning the 'msdfgen' repo. Done. Next step is reading the readme, which states "to build the project from source, you may use the included CMake script. In its default configuration, it requires vcpkg as the provider for third-party library dependencies. If you set the environment variable VCPKG_ROOT to the vcpkg directory, the CMake configuration will take care of fetching all required packages from vcpkg."
Google 'vcpkg' and end up at the vcpkg website. Click 'get started'. Land on a documentation page. This doesn't look like the right place. Click back and select 'browse packages' instead. This doesn't look like the right place either. Google 'install vcpkg windows'. Find a microsft site saying I need to clone the vcpkg repo. Ok. Clone vcpkg repo. Next step is running the vcpkg bootstrap script. Cd into the directory. Run '.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat'. Next step is setting the environment variable. Open powershell. Add vcpkg to my path environment variable by copy pasting what the website tells me. Cd back into the original repo. Google how to build using cmake. It looks like I need to install cmake by first downloading the executable from the cmake website. Download cmake 4.1.1. Install.
Ok, it's time to run cmake. Navigate to the guide on the cmake website. It looks like I need to first create a build directory alongside my source directory. Open terminal and navigate to the folder just above the msdfgen-master folder. Run mkdir msdfgen-build in powershell. It looks like I now need to cd into this folder and run 'cmake ..\msdfgen-master'. Run it. It fails with three errors. "Vcpkg triplet not explicitly specified and could not be deduced. Recommend using -A to explicitly select platform (Win32 or x64)". Google what this means. Confusing. Look at the second error "CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:70 (project): Running 'nmake' '-?' failed with: no such file or directory". Hmm, what is 'nmake'? Google it. It looks like I might need to install 'nmake' and add it to my path environment variable as well. Google it. It looks like I need to install "Visual C++ Development Tools". Google it. It looks like I need to install Visual Studio, and choose "desktop development with c++". Total space required: 10gb. Install this. Restart powershell and cd back into the build directory. Run 'cmake ..\msdfgen-master' again. Same errors.
If I had time, I'd continue down this path, but I know from experience that it will require another day or two of tooling around to get it working. I know I probably look like an idiot who doesn't understand cmake, but that's my whole point: it's a very confusing process for anyone who's unfamiliar.
I had to install vcpkg yesterday for the first time. Well, actually, I ran into a problem last week that could have been solved by installing vcpkg. I also happened to read a comment here on hacker news recently that mentioned vcpkg (but I didn't know what it was).
The problem was that 'cargo install cargo-show' wanted access to an OpenSSL installation (under Windows). The long error spew did mention vcpkg once or twice so I googled it and got very confused by the readme.
So I tried to install OpenSSL without vcpkg. That worked ('winget install openssl') but 'cargo install cargo-show' still didn't. Perhaps I had set up some environment variables wrong.
Yesterday, I finally figured out how to install vcpkg and it was indeed very simple, despite its readme. 'cargo install cargo-show' still didn't work -- it couldn't find openssl installed with the right "triplet" even though it was clearly installed in a way that should work for all 64-bit x86 Windows.
Setting OPENSSL_DIR and then running 'cargo install cargo-show' worked perfectly.
Apparently, there are different ways the directory structure for a vcpkg installed package can look and the vcpkg/openssl gave me one and the build script for one of the dependencies of cargo-show expected another.
Very, very confusing.
I think you can get away with just using 'winget install cmake' and then invoking cmake with the right command line to make it play nice with vcpkg (and that command line is listed in several places). I haven't tried it, though.
'vcpkg integrate install' sets up some sort of secret integration with Visual Studio -- maybe vcpkg learns where VS libraries and binaries (compilers/linkers) are hidden and maybe Visual Studio learns how to invoke vcpkg.
If you run it, it will also tell you to how to integrate more explicitly with cmake:
I hope this makes it slightly less confusing.