cmake-init VS cmake-init-vcpkg-example

https://github.com/friendlyanon/cmake-init This is how you do CMake properly. If you deviate from its install rules you are highly likely to do something wrong.

CMake itself is as declarative as a build systems need to be. For anything nontrivial, these "declarative" solutions all fall apart. Just use https://github.com/friendlyanon/cmake-init, learn CMake and you won't have any issues.

If you want something with a (mostly) Just Works experience then just use https://github.com/friendlyanon/cmake-init

For CMake basics check out the official "Getting started" tutorial: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/guide/tutorial/index.html, as well as Introduction to Modern CMake. You can also get inspired by the CMake project generator cmake-init

You can just use https://github.com/friendlyanon/cmake-init to get a CMake + Conan C project ready to go with a short little command: cmake-init --c -e -p conan coolio

If your dep is not on any of those, then you can write your own port with vcpkg very easily like this.

Are they only on git(hub)? You can write a vcpkg overlay port (example) or use FetchContent if the projects are FetchContent ready in a way that doesn't force FetchContent on people trying to build the project (example).

Take a look at cmake-init, vcpkg and this example that shows how to pull dependencies from git(hub) using vcpkg's overlay ports.

cs50 doesn't appear to be present in the MS repo. No problem, you can write your own overlay port. You can find an example for that here: https://github.com/friendlyanon/cmake-init-vcpkg-example

You can take a look at vcpkg or Conan. Maybe vcpkg could be simpler here, because overlay ports are simpler to write than setting up Artifactory for Conan.

Conan and vcpkg are the only options. I use them both, depends on what kinds of dependencies I want to pull. vcpkg is easier to setup custom one-off dependencies with using overlay ports, while Conan is faster at things if your profile fits one that has a pre-built binary in CCI. Both are trivial to integrate with a CMake project, see these examples for Conan and vcpkg.

Here is an example that shows you how to write your own ports for libraries that don't have one provided by vcpkg. The alternative is doing it manually, but eh.

As part of the cmake-init examples I also have an example showing vcpkg integration with a CMake project with exact instructions on what that takes, which also involves CI.

Overlay ports.

IMPORTED targets have directory scope, they aren't global like the other target types. Depending on what your project's type is and how it's used, the correct answer can vary from just requiring a path to be passed on the CLI to proper package management usage (e.g. vcpkg)