CMake version recommendations and install

October 21, 2025

Downloading the latest release of CMake is usually easy. Admin / sudo is not required.

Linux: snap install cmake
macOS: brew install cmake
Windows: winget install Kitware.CMake
PyPI CMake package: python -m pip install cmake

For platforms where CMake binaries aren’t easily available, build CMake using scripts/build_cmake.cmake.

To see the merge requests for a certain release, use a URL like: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/merge_requests?milestone_title=3.32.0&scope=all&state=all

CMake 4.2 enables Visual Studio 18 2026 generator.

ExternalProject added options to modify environment variables at each step by CONFIGURE_ENVIRONMENT_MODIFICATION, BUILD_ENVIRONMENT_MODIFICATION, INSTALL_ENVIRONMENT_MODIFICATION, TEST_ENVIRONMENT_MODIFICATION

Targets gain property SPDX_LICENSE

CMake 4.1 project() added COMPAT_VERSION that propagates to subdirectories and can be queried for the top-level COMPAT_VERSION.

CMake 4.0 enables CMAKE_LINK_WARNING_AS_ERROR boolean option sets most compilers to error if a compile warning occurs, which is generally a good setting for CI systems. target_link_libraries() can use a LINKER: prefix to abstract options. CTest –interactive-debug-mode is particularly useful on Windows to enable debug dumps and error popup windows.

CMake 3.31 warns if cmake_minimum_required() is < 3.10. TLS ≥ 1.2 is required by default for internet operations e.g. file(DOWNLOAD), ExternalProject, FetchContent, and similar. file(ARCHIVE_CREATE) gained a long-needed WORKING_DIRECTORY parameter that is essentially necessary to avoid machine-specific paths being embedded in the archive. CMAKE_LINK_LIBRARIES_STRATEGY allows specifying a strategy for ordering target direct link dependencies.

CMake 3.30 adds C++26 support. CMAKE_TLS_VERIFY environment variable was added to set TLS verification (true, false). CMake 3.31 defaults CMAKE_TLS_VERIFY to on, where previously it was off.

CMake 3.29 adds cmake_language(EXIT code) to exit CMake script mode with a specific return code. This is useful when using CMake as a platform-agnostic scripting language instead of shell script.

Environment variable CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is used to set the default install prefix across projects–it can be overridden as typical by cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= option.

Target property TEST_LAUNCHER allows specifying a test launcher. For MPI program this allows deduplicating or making more programmatic test runner scripts.

Linker information variables including CMAKE__COMPILER_LINKER_ID have been added to allow programmatic logic like setting target_link_options() based on the particular linker.

ctest --parallel without a number or 0 will use unbounded test run parallelism.

CMake 3.28 changes PATH behavior for Windows find_{library,path,file}() to no longer search PATH. This may break some projects that rely on PATH for finding libraries. The MSYS2-distributed CMake is patched to include PATH like earlier CMake, which can be confusing for CI etc. not using MSYS CMake with that patch. Windows CI/user may need to specify CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH like

cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$Env:SYSTEMDRIVE/msys64/ucrt64/lib -B build

Support for C++20 modules is considerably improved and most users will want at least CMake 3.28 to make C++ modules usable. Generator expressions $<IF> $<AND> $<OR> now short circuit. Test properties now have a DIRECTORY parameter, useful for setting test parameters from the project’s top level CMakeLists.txt. CMake 3.28.4 fixed a long-standing bug in Ninja Fortran targets that use include statements.

CMake 3.27 emits warning for cmake_minimum_required(VERSION) < 3.5. CTest test properties TIMEOUT_SIGNAL_NAME and TIMEOUT_SIGNAL_GRACE_PERIOD specify a POSIX signal to send to a timed out test process. Interactive CMake debugger added by cmake --debugger is used with an IDE such as Visual Studio. CMake script command cmake_file_api() allows querying CMake File API from within CMake.

ℹ️ Note

Fortran + Ninja was broken for OBJECT libraries in CMake 3.27.0..3.27.8 and fixed in 3.27.9.

Older CMake changelog