diff --git a/docs/user/faq.md b/docs/user/faq.md
index a14514e41c..74a533c8eb 100644
--- a/docs/user/faq.md
+++ b/docs/user/faq.md
@@ -94,6 +94,17 @@ x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0-clang: No such file or directory
 
 are a telltale sign that you are lacking compilers.
 
+The actual orchestration of the various compilation and linking steps is almost always done
+by some build orchestrator (e.g. `CMake`, `meson`, ...), which will generally require a
+build system (e.g. `ninja`, `make`), or possibly other supporting tools like `pkg-config`.
+
+We package several tools that can be used for building C/C++ code; a selection that covers
+the most common scenarios would be:
+
+```
+cxx-compiler cmake pkg-config make ninja meson
+```
+
 <a id="faq-compiler-required-options"></a>
 
 <a id="why-don-t-the-c-c-compilers-automatically-know-how-to-find-libraries-installed-by-conda"></a>