Microsoft is continuously improving its record with the open source community. First dumping massive chunks of .NET into github, then actually making very dedicated effort to clean it up and make it portable to Linux and Mac. Now comes another step, albeit smaller, in the same direction. Visual Studio 2017 will support CMake projects in a native way, without the need to generate .proj and .sln files first. This is great news, because it saves some effort for those working on cross-platform C++ products.

The development comes as a result of collaboration by both CMake maintainers and Microsoft's VS team. CMake now provides a "daemon" mode, which allows it to be queried in a generic and interactive way. External tools, such as VS2017, can utilise this facility and use the resulting information to drive the interaction with the end user. Obviously, many other tools, not just Visual Studio, can make use of this new CMake mode. Hopefully we will see even wider adoption of it in the development community.