CMake 4.1 Release Notes

Changes made since CMake 4.0 include the following.

New Features

File-Based API

• The cmake-file-api(7) v1 now writes partial replies when buildsystem generation fails with an error. See the v1 Reply Error Index.

Generators

• Makefile Generators and Ninja Generators gained support for adding a linker launcher with Fortran, CUDA, and HIP. See the CMAKE_<LANG>_LINKER_LAUNCHER variable and <LANG>_LINKER_LAUNCHER target property for details.

Command-Line

• The cmake --build command-line tool, when used with the Xcode generator, now detects when a third-party tool has wrapped the generated .xcodeproj in a .xcworkspace, and drives the build through the workspace instead.

Configure Log

• The cmake-configure-log(7) now reports events from find_package() (in CONFIG mode), find_path(), find_file(), find_library(), and find_program() commands when first invoked, when their results transition between "not found" and "found", or when enabled explicitly by the --debug-find command-line option. See Event Kind find and Event Kind find_package. Logging may also be controlled by the CMAKE_FIND_DEBUG_MODE and CMAKE_FIND_DEBUG_MODE_NO_IMPLICIT_CONFIGURE_LOG variables.

Compilers

• Diab compilers from Wind River Systems, versions 5.9.x+, are now supported with compiler id Diab for languages ASM, C, and CXX.

• Renesas Compilers are now supported with compiler id Renesas for languages ASM and C.

Commands

• The add_dependencies() command may be called with no dependencies.

• The cmake_pkg_config() command now supports the IMPORT and POPULATE subcommands for interfacing CMake targets with pkg-config based dependencies.

• The project() command now has experimental support for the COMPAT_VERSION keyword, gated by CMAKE_EXPERIMENTAL_EXPORT_PACKAGE_INFO.

Variables

• The CMAKE_FIND_REQUIRED variable was added to tell find_package(), find_path(), find_file(), find_library(), and find_program() to be REQUIRED by default. The commands also gained an OPTIONAL keyword to ignore the variable for a specific call.

• The CMAKE_<LANG>_COMPILER_ARCHITECTURE_ID variable is now populated for most compilers, and documented for public use.

• The CMAKE_<LANG>_ICSTAT variable and corresponding <LANG>_ICSTAT target property were added to tell the Makefile Generators and the Ninja Generators to run the IAR icstat tool along with the compiler for C and CXX languages.

Environment Variables

• The CMAKE_<LANG>_IMPLICIT_LINK_LIBRARIES_EXCLUDE environment variable was added to optionally exclude specific libraries from the detected set of CMAKE_<LANG>_IMPLICIT_LINK_LIBRARIES.

Properties

• The AUTOMOC_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES target property and associated CMAKE_AUTOMOC_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES variable were added to override the automatic discovery of moc includes from a target's transitive include directories.

• The MACOSX_PACKAGE_LOCATION source file property now works when set on a source directory, and copies its entire tree into the bundle.

• The PDB_NAME and COMPILE_PDB_NAME target properties now support generator expressions.

Modules

• The FindASPELL module now provides a version variable, imported targets, and components to optionally select the Aspell library and executable separately.

• The FindBLAS and FindLAPACK modules now support the NVIDIA Performance Libraries (NVPL).

• The FindProtobuf module's protobuf_generate(DEPENDENCIES) command argument now accepts multiple values.

• The FindProtobuf module's protobuf_generate_cpp() and protobuf_generate_python() commands, together with their Protobuf_IMPORT_DIRS and PROTOBUF_GENERATE_CPP_APPEND_PATH hint variables, are now deprecated in favor of the protobuf_generate() command.

Regular Expressions

• The string(REGEX MATCHALL), string(REGEX REPLACE), and list(TRANSFORM REPLACE) commands now match the regular expression ^ anchor at most once in repeated searches, at the start of the input. See policy CMP0186.

• The string(REGEX REPLACE) command now allows references to unmatched groups. They are replaced with empty strings.

• The string(REGEX MATCH), string(REGEX MATCHALL), and string(REGEX REPLACE) commands now allow zero-length matches.

CTest

• ctest(1) gained a --schedule-random-seed option to specify a numeric random seed to make ctest --schedule-random deterministic for reproduction.

CPack

• The CPack NuGet Generator gained option CPACK_NUGET_SYMBOL_PACKAGE to generate NuGet symbol packages containing PDB files.

• The CPack RPM Generator gained CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_ENHANCES, CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_RECOMMENDS, and CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_SUPPLEMENTS variables to specify the corresponding RPM spec fields.

Deprecated and Removed Features

• The FindGTest module's result variables GTEST_INCLUDE_DIRS, GTEST_LIBRARIES, GTEST_MAIN_LIBRARIES, and GTEST_BOTH_LIBRARIES are now deprecated in favor of using GTest::gtest and GTest::gtest_main imported targets.

• The FindGCCXML module has been deprecated via policy CMP0188. Port projects to CastXML instead.

• The FindCABLE module has been deprecated via policy CMP0191.

• The CMakeDetermineVSServicePack module has been deprecated via policy CMP0196. Port projects to the CMAKE_<LANG>_COMPILER_VERSION variable instead.

Other Changes

• The ExternalProject module no longer checks the URL archive file extension. Any archive type that cmake -E tar can extract is now allowed.

• Modules FindPython3, FindPython2 and FindPython now enforce consistency of artifacts in cross-compiling mode. This prevents mixing host and target artifacts. See policy CMP0190.

• The GNUInstallDirs module now prefers to default SYSCONFDIR, LOCALSTATEDIR, and RUNSTATEDIR to absolute paths when installing to special prefixes. See policy CMP0192.

• The GNUInstallDirs module now caches CMAKE_INSTALL_* variables with their leading usr/ for install prefix /. See policy CMP0193.

• The install(TARGETS) command no longer ignores file sets which haven't been defined at the point it is called. The ordering of target_sources(FILE_SET) and install(TARGETS) is no longer semantically relevant.

• Enabling ASM no longer accidentally succeeds using MSVC's cl C compiler as an assembler. See policy CMP0194.

• The MSVC link -machine: flag is no longer added to the CMAKE_*_LINKER_FLAGS variables. See policy CMP0197.

• The TARGET_PROPERTY generator expression now evaluates the LINK_LIBRARIES and INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES target properties transitively. See policy CMP0189.

Updates

Changes made since CMake 4.1.0 include the following.

4.1.1

• This version made no changes to documented features or interfaces. Some implementation updates were made to support ecosystem changes and/or fix regressions.

4.1.2

• The file(GENERATE) command, when evaluating generator expressions, now uses the value of policy CMP0189 as of each call site. Previously, it used the value as of the end of the directory's CMakeLists.txt, as all other generator expression evaluations do.