CMake changelog for 3.27 .. 3.31

March 21, 2026

CMake 3.31 additions include:

CMake 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 additions include:

C++26 support.
CMAKE_TLS_VERIFY environment variable was added to set TLS verification (true, false).
defaults CMAKE_TLS_VERIFY to on, where previously it was off.
CTest can use the --test-dir argument with --preset, which avoids needing to be locked into a specific build directory.

CMake 3.29 additions include:

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 additions include:

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. 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 additions include:

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.