I forgot to copy the bug nimber, so here goes the explanation Hi! In fact adding this dependency... is a bug. Yes, qt-cmake requires cmake, but it is only required by people using cmake to build their projects. And in this case those people need to explicit a dependency on cmake.
On the other hand adding cmake as a dependency forces the installation of a build system which might not even get used, or even worse, might let the code use CMake when the user/maintainer wants to use another build system. Sometimes certain Debian packages ship more than one binary, and not all their dependencies need to be explicit, and this is an example case: adding the dependency inflicts more problems than not adding it. I propose moving this to a Suggest, which is a better place for this requirement. -- Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer https://perezmeyer.com.ar/