CMake is still the defacto standard for build system in the C++ library world, it's not perfect, but neither is any other tooling.
Using CMake does really full-fill your "bulletproof tasks"
1) Download SFML repository
2) Run
cmake . && cmake --build . --target INSTALL or similar depending on the system in use
"I don't understand tool X so let's use tool Y instead" will cause you to waste a lot more time, than to invest some of that time into learning tool X.
For the future, please don't try to hijack other threads with unrelated topics.