Chapter 7: Managing Dependencies with CMake
It doesn't really matter whether your solution is big or small; as it matures, you'll eventually decide to bring in external dependencies. It's important to avoid the costs of creating and maintaining code using prevailing business logic. This way, you can devote your time to things that matter to you and your customers.
External dependencies are used not only to provide frameworks and features and solve quirky problems. They can also play an important part in the process of building and controlling the quality of your code – whether it is in the form of special compilers such as Protobuf or testing frameworks such as GTest.
Whether you're working with open source projects or using projects written by other developers in your company, you still need a good, clean process to manage external dependencies. Solving this on your own would take countless hours of setup and a lot of additional support work later...
