> Cargo is absolutely awful. It might be better than cmake, but it still the worst part about Rust. It’s completely opaque, and intermixes a huge pile of different functionality.

"Absolutely awful" strikes me as wild hyperbole -- you also meant it this way as well, right? What toolchains are not absolutely awful in your mind?

Cargo isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination -- there are a few common complaints that people have and a bunch of sharp edges (most of which have a github issue that has been open for years), but... "absolutely awful" has to be hyperbole.