Building libsnark on MacOS

[algebravic]

I'm trying to build libsnark on Mac Os (15.1.1) on an M3 mac. I'm using cmake 3.31. Strangely enough, even though the CMakeLists.txt file starts with

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.31)

project (libsnark)

I get the following error from cmake

CMake Warning (dev) in CMakeLists.txt:
  No project() command is present.  The top-level CMakeLists.txt file must
  contain a literal, direct call to the project() command.  Add a line of
  code such as

    project(ProjectName)

  near the top of the file, but after cmake_minimum_required().

In addition it also complains that no cmake_minimum_required command is present. Are there any suggestions as to how to debug this?