make, cmake usually is not invoked in the same directory as the project (= out of source build). $ cmake path/to/project
Makefile in the current directory. path/to/project/CMakeLists.txt. CMakeLists.txt can reference CMakeLists.txt in other sub-directories. Makefile generated by CMake can be forced to print the building commands with make VERBOSE=1. cmake (written in C++) - so huge and bloated, compilation takes longer than compiling GCC (!). It’s not even possible to create freestanding Makefiles, since the generated Makefiles call back into the cmake binary itself.