platform_system_core VS cmake-init

As far as scientific studies go, I'm not sure if there are any that support the arguments of the linked proposal, but if you take a look at some of the most complex, large scale projects out there, you'll notice that they follow to a large extent the same structure as the one outlined in the above proposal. For instance, checkout the Google Chromium project, the AOSP projects, abseil, folly and many others. Of course, there will be exceptions so this is not a foolproof argument but I think it's interesting that projects of this scale have been designed this way.

after taking a look at the source code it's because the display field is an integer and it rounds down. that means any decimal value just gets floored to the next integer down.

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