I've been very busy with school and work.
Same here, don't worry about speed
You can try the following :
- did you compile frameworks or dylibs ? You might want to choose frameworks instead of the default value, i.e. dylib. (see cmake tutorial)
- instead of copying by hand the produced file use make install. Note that there are 6 produced frameworks (system, window, graphics, audio, network and the special one for header : SFML.framework).
Do I need to run all the make files that are generated or are they automatically run when that topmost one is run?
You don't need to dive into subfolders. The main makefile will call the others for you.