We generally recommend using Ninja with CMake, especially for large projects. Ninja speeds up rebuild times significantly and avoids erratic problems with slower GNU Make. CMake also has the Ninja Multi-Config generator

cmake -G "Ninja Multi-Config"

that allows building Debug and Release builds or even cross builds without regenerating build*.ninja files for each build type.

Ninja Multi-Config generator options may be used transparently with older CMake and different generators. The default CMake generator can be set with environment variable:

CMAKE_GENERATOR="Ninja Multi-Config"

To make the default multi-config build “Release” while making Debug config also available, add to CMakeLists.txt:

set(CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES "Release;RelWithDebInfo;Debug" CACHE STRING "Build type selections" FORCE)

Because Release is listed first, the default build type is Release. With those settings, one can quickly build Debug and Release and test like:

cmake -B build

# Release default per above settings
cmake --build build

ctest --test-dir build -C Release

Then update and test Debug by:

cmake --build build --config Debug

ctest --test-dir build -C Debug