[spooky_deep]

CMake was never declarative AFAIK?

CMake today is effectively an eso-lang / Turing tarpit with some “modern” declarative conventions that people try to push.

[ahartmetz]

"Modern CMake" is more about scoping all properties to the targets that they belong to (including stuff like what you also need to link against if you link against target foo) than about language features. The CMake language hasn't changed much except correcting some early weirdness about "if" and the addition of generator expressions, which are fortunately not often needed.