We have now all generated files in place, so let us retry the build. We should be able to configure and compile the sources, but we will not be able to link:

$ mkdir -p build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ cmake --build .

...
Scanning dependencies of target vim
[ 98%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/vim.dir/main.c.o
[100%] Linking C executable ../bin/vim
../lib64/libbasic_sources.a(term.c.o): In function `set_shellsize.part.12':
term.c:(.text+0x2bd): undefined reference to `tputs'
../lib64/libbasic_sources.a(term.c.o): In function `getlinecol':
term.c:(.text+0x902): undefined reference to `tgetent'
term.c:(.text+0x915): undefined reference to `tgetent'
term.c:(.text+0x935): undefined reference to `tgetnum'
term.c:(.text+0x948): undefined reference to `tgetnum'

... many other undefined references ...

Again, we can take the log file from the Autotools compilation and, in particular, the link line as inspiration to resolve the missing dependencies by adding the following code to src/CMakeLists.txt:

# find X11 and link to it
find_package(X11 REQUIRED)
if(X11_FOUND)
  target_link_libraries(vim
    PUBLIC
      ${X11_LIBRARIES}
    )
endif()

# a couple of more system libraries that the code requires
foreach(_library IN ITEMS Xt SM m tinfo acl gpm dl)
  find_library(_${_library}_found ${_library} REQUIRED)
  if(_${_library}_found)
    target_link_libraries(vim
      PUBLIC
        ${_library}
      )
  endif()
endforeach()

Observe how we can add one library dependency to the target at a time and do not have to construct and carry around a list of libraries in a variable, which would produce more brittle CMake code since the variable could get corrupted on the way, in particular for larger projects.

With this change, the code compiles and links:

$ cmake --build .

...
Scanning dependencies of target vim
[ 98%] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/vim.dir/main.c.o
[100%] Linking C executable ../bin/vim
[100%] Built target vim

We can now try to execute the compiled binary and edit some files with our newly compiled version of Vim!