A general remark in this discussion on build systems: I think your time is best spent elsewhere.
I tried to get CMake going on Windows, and in the end it did not work because the final commandline to link it all was too large. I did not know how to solve it, and frankly, was no longer sure what exactly we would gain from the whole effort to convert the build mechanism.
I do not want to use cygwin, or other uncomfortable tools, and I can only hope I will be happy to whatever you guys decide to spend many hours on... Since Krzysztof already seems to have spent these hours successfully, why don't we go with that for a while? Whichever system we choose, in a couple of years someone will again bring up an argument about changing the build system.
Cheers, Johan