CMake 4.3 Release Notes

Changes made since CMake 4.2 include the following.

New Features

Common Package Specification

• Support for importing and exporting packages described using the Common Package Specification (CPS) was added. This improves build system interoperability by allowing expressive, feature-rich package descriptions to be exchanged in a format other than CMake Language.

  • The find_package() now searches for and can import CPS packages.

  • The install() and export() commands gained a new PACKAGE_INFO sub-command to generate CPS package descriptions.

  • The project() command gained new COMPAT_VERSION and SPDX_LICENSE options. These values may be inherited when creating a CPS package description. See the install(PACKAGE_INFO) documentation for details.

Instrumentation

• cmake-instrumentation(7) was added to enable collection of timing data, target information, and system diagnostic information during the configure, generate, build, test, and install steps of a CMake project:

  • Instrumentation data are indexed and provided to callbacks for custom processing.

  • Instrumentation data are included in submissions to CDash.

  • Optionally, Google Trace Event Format files may be generated to visualize instrumentation data.

File-Based API

• The cmake-file-api(7) "codemodel" version 2 version field has been updated to 2.10.

• The cmake-file-api(7) "codemodel" version 2 "target" object gained a new interfaceSources array field, and the sourceGroups array items gained a new interfaceSourceIndexes array field.

Platforms

• HIP language code may now be compiled for SPIR-V targets, e.g., via chipStar. See the CMAKE_HIP_PLATFORM variable.

Command-Line

• cmake --version now supports a =json-v1 value to print detailed version information in a JSON format.

• cmake --build now supports specifying a build directory and preset together. The build preset will be used with the explicit build directory substituted.

• The cmake -E commands md5sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum now support reading from standard input by passing -.

• The cmake -E bin2c command-line tool was added.

• The cmake -E tar command-line tool:

  • Gained a --cmake-tar-compression-level flag to specify the compression level.

  • Gained a --cmake-tar-compression-method flag to specify the compression method.

  • Gained a --cmake-tar-threads flag to enable multithreaded operations.

  • Now supports specifying compression method and level for 7zip and zip formats.

  • Gained a --format=raw flag to disable compression.

  • Gained a --lzma flag to specify LZMA compression.

Commands

• The cmake_instrumentation() command was added to make project-level instrumentation queries.

• The file(ARCHIVE_CREATE) command:

  • Gained a THREADS option to enable multithreaded operations.

  • Now supports COMPRESSION method Deflate as an alias for GZip.

  • Now supports COMPRESSION method LZMA.

  • Now supports COMPRESSION method LZMA2 as an alias for XZ.

  • Now supports COMPRESSION method PPMd for format 7zip.

  • Now supports COMPRESSION and COMPRESSION_LEVEL options for formats 7zip and zip.

• The get_property() and set_property() commands now support a FILE_SET scope for file set properties of a target.

• The string(JSON) command gained new GET_RAW and STRING_ENCODE modes.

• The source_group() command now supports generator expressions.

• The cmake_host_system_information() command gained a LOCALE_CHARSET query for the expected cmake-language(7) script encoding.

Variables

• The CMAKE_<LANG>_LINK_FLAGS and CMAKE_<LANG>_LINK_FLAGS_<CONFIG> variables were added to support per-language link flags for all target types. See policy CMP0210.

• The CMAKE_CXX_MODULE_STD variable and corresponding CXX_MODULE_STD target property were added to control the availability of import std for C++ targets.

• The read-only CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_IMPORT_STD variable was added to list the C++ standard levels for which import std is available on the current toolchain.

• The CMAKE_CXX_STDLIB_MODULES_JSON variable was added to specify an import std module metadata file instead of relying on automatic detection from the C++ compiler.

• The CMAKE_VERIFY_PRIVATE_HEADER_SETS variable and corresponding VERIFY_PRIVATE_HEADER_SETS target property were added to enable build rules that verify all headers in private file sets can be used on their own.

Properties

• A <LANG>_PVS_STUDIO target property and supporting CMAKE_<LANG>_PVS_STUDIO variable were introduced to tell Makefile Generators and Ninja Generators to run pvs-studio-analyzer with the compiler for C and CXX languages.

• When VERIFY_INTERFACE_HEADER_SETS is set to true on an executable target, that target's interface file sets are verified regardless of its ENABLE_EXPORTS property. See policy CMP0209.

• The PRIVATE_HEADER_SETS_TO_VERIFY target property was added to customize which private file sets to verify when the target's VERIFY_PRIVATE_HEADER_SETS property is true.

Modules

• The FindCUDAToolkit module now creates a CUDA::bin2c imported target for the bin2c utility.

• The FindLibXml2 module gained a LibXml2_USE_STATIC_LIBS hint to select static libraries.

• The FindRuby module now provides imported targets.

• The FindSQLite3 module now provides imported targets with the SQLite3:: prefix.

• The UseJava module's add_jar() command now accepts a new INCLUDE_MODULES option that adds its arguments to the --module-path argument to the Java compiler. This allows building JAR files that use JPMS modules in their build.

Generator Expressions

• String Comparison generator expressions were added.

• $<STRING:...> generator expressions were added for query, generation, and transformation operations on strings.

• The $<FILE_SET_EXISTS> and $<FILE_SET_PROPERTY> generator expressions were added to query file set existence and properties.

• The $<SOURCE_EXISTS> and $<SOURCE_PROPERTY> generator expressions were added to query source file existence and properties.

CTest

• The CTestCoverageCollectGCOV module:

  • Now supports TARBALL_COMPRESSION method LZMA.

  • Now supports TARBALL_COMPRESSION method LZMA2 as an alias for XZ.

  • Now supports FROM_EXT with file extensions corresponding to LZMA and ZSTD compression.

CPack

• CPack gained the CPACK_COMPRESSION_LEVEL variable to control the compression level used when creating packages.

• The CPack Archive Generator:

  • Now supports compression method specification for formats 7zip and zip.

  • Gained a CPACK_ARCHIVE_COMPRESSION_LEVEL option to control the compression level used when creating archive packages.

  • Gained CPACK_ARCHIVE_UID and CPACK_ARCHIVE_GID options to specify the UID and GID of archive entries, respectively. The defaults are UID 0 and GID 0. See policy CMP0206.

• The CPack DEB Generator gained a new CPACK_DEBIAN_COMPRESSION_LEVEL variable to control the compression level used when creating Debian packages.

• The CPack WIX Generator now supports per-user installers by setting CPACK_WIX_INSTALL_SCOPE to perUser.

Deprecated and Removed Features

• The CMAKE_ENABLE_EXPORTS variable is deprecated in favor of the CMAKE_EXECUTABLE_ENABLE_EXPORTS and CMAKE_SHARED_LIBRARY_ENABLE_EXPORTS variables.

• The export(EXPORT) command no longer allows certain arguments to be missing or empty. See policy CMP0208.

Other Changes

• The cmake -E tar command-line tool and the file(ARCHIVE_EXTRACT) command now reject archive entries whose paths are absolute or contain .. path traversal components.

• The family of cmake --trace and related commands now print "end" commands for control structures: endblock(), endforeach(), endfunction(), endif(), endmacro(), and endwhile().

• The file(CREATE_LINK) command's COPY_ON_ERROR option, when used with a directory, now copies directory content. See policy CMP0205.

• The file(GET_RUNTIME_DEPENDENCIES) and install(RUNTIME_DEPENDENCY_SET) commands now normalize paths before matching filters. See policy CMP0207.

• The precompiled Linux aarch64 binaries provided on cmake.org now require GLIBC 2.28 or higher.

• The precompiled macOS binary provided on cmake.org for macOS 10.13+ now requires macOS 12 or newer for the cmake-gui(1) application. The command-line tools still run on macOS 10.13.

• The precompiled Windows binaries provided on cmake.org now require Windows 10 or higher.