CMake Modernization

[pmai]

Modernize CMake infrastructure, including suggestions by @doganulus

[doganulus]

Hi @pmai, thank you for moving this issue here.

One thing to be considered is CMake's FetchContent to handle dependencies such as protobuf. This would require newer CMake versions with increasing capability and features.

Can we increase the minimum CMake version to the version 3.18 (debian11) at least or even to 3.22 (ubuntu22.04).

[pmai]

One thing to be considered is CMake's FetchContent to handle dependencies such as protobuf. This would require newer CMake versions with increasing capability and features.

Can we increase the minimum CMake version to the version 3.18 (debian11) at least or even to 3.22 (ubuntu22.04).

For this release cycle we are not looking at FetchContent as a way to handle dependencies, as vcpkg and other package managers work better for cross-platform needs for us. If we would add FetchContent support we'd likely need 3.24 or higher at a minimum, so that the FetchContent would only serve as a fallback (constant changes in e.g. packaging and build needs in protobuf does not make us likely to want to interface more directly with them going forward).