In a Hurry

...and you already have a development environment set up, understand CMake, and have the Max SDK available? And Python 3 + DocUtils + Jinja if you want docs?

Cool:

mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake -DMAX_SDK_PATH=<location of your Max SDK> -DDOCS=<ON/OFF> ..
make install

This will assemble a Max package in release-packaging.

An alternative to setting up / running CMake directly on the command line is to install the CMake GUI, or use to use the curses GUI ccmake.

Also, with CMake you have a choice of which build system you use.

• The default on macOS and Linux is Unix Makefiles. On macOS you can also use Xcode by passing -GXcode to CMake when you first run it.
• The default on Windows is the latest version of Visual Studio installed. However, Visual Studio can open CMake files directly as projects, which has some upsides. When used this way, CMake variables have to be set via a JSON file that MSVC will use to configure CMake.