Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

CMake VS Understand

Compare CMake VS Understand and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

CMake logo CMake

CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software.

Understand logo Understand

Combines a powerful Code Editor together with an impressive array of static analysis tools that will change the way you work with code.
  • CMake Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-21

We recommend LibHunt CMake for discovery and comparisons of trending CMake projects.

  • Understand Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29

CMake features and specs

  • Cross-platform support
    CMake is designed to support multiple operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux. This allows developers to write platform-independent CMake scripts.
  • Build tool agnostic
    CMake can generate build files for a variety of build systems including Makefiles, Ninja, and Visual Studio solutions. This means developers are not tied to a specific build tool.
  • Large community and extensive documentation
    CMake has a large user base and an extensive amount of documentation and tutorials available which can be helpful for new and experienced users alike.
  • Integrated testing support
    CMake includes support for testing frameworks such as CTest, which allows for automated testing of code during the build process.
  • Modular and scalable
    CMake is highly modular, enabling users to create reusable and maintainable code by organizing CMake scripts into libraries and modules.

Possible disadvantages of CMake

  • Steep learning curve
    CMake's complexity and its extensive range of features can be difficult for beginners to grasp, leading to a steep learning curve.
  • Verbose syntax
    CMake scripts can often become verbose and difficult to read, especially for large projects. This can make maintenance and debugging challenging.
  • Inconsistent module quality
    The quality and support of different CMake modules can vary, sometimes leading to issues with compatibility or functionality.
  • Performance overhead
    CMake may introduce some performance overhead during the configuration process, especially for very large projects.
  • Complexity in advanced features
    Some of the more advanced features of CMake, such as custom commands and complex dependency management, can be quite difficult to implement correctly.

Understand features and specs

  • Static Code Analysis
  • Metrics
  • Graphs
  • Code Navigation
  • Dependency Analysis
  • Architectures
  • Compliance Validation
  • API Support
  • Code Editing

Analysis of CMake

Overall verdict

  • CMake is generally considered a good tool for managing the build process of software projects, especially those with a complex codebase that spans multiple platforms.

Why this product is good

  • Flexibility
    It offers great flexibility in terms of defining build processes, enabling advanced configuration and optimization techniques to be used.
  • Integration
    It integrates well with many popular IDEs and other tools, providing a smoother development experience.
  • Wide adoption
    CMake is widely used in the industry, which leads to robust community support and regular updates.
  • Cross platform support
    CMake is designed to support multiple platforms, which makes it highly valuable for projects that need to be compiled and run on different operating systems.

Recommended for

  • projects requiring cross-platform compatibility
  • developers looking for a powerful build configuration tool
  • complex software projects with numerous dependencies
  • teams that value strong community and industry support

CMake videos

CMake for Dummies

More videos:

  • Review - CppCon 2017: Mathieu Ropert “Using Modern CMake Patterns to Enforce a Good Modular Design”
  • Review - Hunter, a CMake driven package manager for C/C++ projects - Daniel Friedrich - Lightning Talks

Understand videos

Getting Started with Understand

More videos:

  • Demo - What is Understand

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CMake and Understand)
Front End Package Manager
Code Coverage
0 0%
100% 100
JS Build Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Code Quality
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing CMake and Understand.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Understand's answer:

-C/C++ -Qt -Understand

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

Understand's answer:

-NASA -U.S. Airforce -General Electric -Nvidia -Raytheon -Amazon -Lockheed Martin -Samsung -Raytheon -Pratt & Whitney -Dell -Intuity -Aurora Flight Sciences

What makes your product unique?

Understand's answer:

Understand has shares many features found in other products but all wrapped into one easy to use package. Our most defining feature is the Hyper-XREF™ technology we invented that provides a detailed cross-referencing of all the interconnections in your code.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CMake and Understand

CMake Reviews

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Understand Reviews

TOP 40 Static Code Analysis Tools (Best Source Code Analysis Tools)
Just like its name, this tool lets user UNDERSTAND code by analyzing, measuring, visualizing and maintaining. This allows quick analysis of massive codes. This is one tool that is mainly used by the aerospace and automakers industry. Supports major languages like C/C++, ADA, COBOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL, Python and other web languages.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CMake seems to be a lot more popular than Understand. While we know about 55 links to CMake, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Understand. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CMake mentions (55)

  • How I deployed my first project for my devops portfolio: Project Architecture
    I used CMAKE as my compiling tool followed by make. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • DeadLock: Research Results & Tech Stack
    All this C++ project can't be ran as simple C++ code, so I will be building this whole package using CMake. It will streamline building this project onto other computers. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Master This Feature of DevEco Studio to Efficiently Implement ArkTS and C++ Glue Code
    For knowledge in this aspect, you can refer to the relevant documents of the CMake build tool: https://cmake.org/. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Creating a Native Desktop GUI Using C++ with GTK
    I used CMAKE to define the build configurations. I find it very convenient that CMAKE generates the Makefile on Linux and can also create a Visual Studio project on Windows. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Top 7 C++ Tools to explore in 2024 if it's not already the case.
    CMake stands for "Cross-platform Make" and is an open-source, platform-independent build system. It's designed to build, test, and package software projects written in C and C++, but it can also be used for other languages. Here's an overview of CMake and its features:. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

Understand mentions (2)

  • What Killed Perl?
    I have great love for Perl, but I'm not super eager to go back to using it. I used it in probably one of the more cursed contexts I've ever heard of. Understand[0] is a static analyzer for many languages, and one of its killer features is that it is programmable with a Perl API. I used this feature at a defense consulting job to help target audits of huge, multi-million LOC codebases. Perl's expressivity was very... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Discontinue Sourcetrail
    Https://lattix.com/ can produce impact reports showing “changing X affects A, B and Y on the first level which in turn affects C, D, E, F and Z on the second level” and so on… https://scitools.com/ Understand can answer similar questions and tries to perform flow analysis “through” function pointers as well. - Source: Hacker News / almost 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CMake and Understand, you can also consider the following products

GNU Make - GNU Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files.

SonarQube - SonarQube, a core component of the Sonar solution, is an open source, self-managed tool that systematically helps developers and organizations deliver Clean Code.

SCons - SCons is an Open Source software construction tool—that is, a next-generation build tool.

Source Insight - Source Insight is a programming editor & code browser with built-in live analysis for C/C++, C#, Java, and more; helping you understand large projects.

SBT - SBT is a build tool for Scala, like Ant or Maven but with hieroglyphics.

CppDepend - Master Your C and C++ Codebase with Precision and Insight