[cheesedoodle]

If you mean the extra work is exporting your libraries and having a list of all your sub_projects in the root CMakeLists.txt, then yes.

I think it's minimal work, as I would like to have all my libraries imported and linked anyway:

  find_package(MyLib)
  target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE MyLib::MyLib)

This looks tidy any more explicit, avoids transitive leakage and more.

What is it that does not often work as you expect?

[junon]

Because you're ignoring how find_package works and how dependencies use the variables inside of them. Not every find script creates some sort of target.