cmake is a self-inflicted problem of some C++ users, and an independent issue of the language itself (just like cargo for rust). If you want, you can use a makefile and distribution-provided dependencies, or vendored dependencies, and you don't need cmake.
imo the biggest single problem with C++ that the simple act of building it is not (and it seems, cannot) be standardized.
This creates kind of geographic barriers that segregate populations of C++ users, and just like any language, that isolation begets dialects and idioms that are foreign to anyone from a different group.
But the stewards of the language seem to pretend these barriers don't exist, or at least don't understand them, and go on to make the mountain ranges separating our valleys even steeper.
So it's not that CMake is a self-inflicted wound. It's the natural evolution of a tool to fill in the gaps left under specified by the language developers.
