GTest broken by CMake 3.27, I think

Code
1

I have been using the GTest instructions to use CMake to get it and build it for the past couple of years:

    include(FetchContent)
    FetchContent_Declare(
      googletest
      DOWNLOAD_EXTRACT_TIMESTAMP
      URL https://github.com/google/googletest/archive/609281088cfefc76f9d0ce82e1ff6c30cc3591e5.zip
    )

    # For Windows: Prevent overriding the parent project's compiler/linker settings
    set(gtest_force_shared_crt ON CACHE BOOL "" FORCE)
    FetchContent_MakeAvailable(googletest)

    enable_testing()
    include(GoogleTest)

Apart from the addition of DOWNLOAD_EXTRACT_TIMESTAMP, this has worked fine. Now, however, I am getting these messages:

No download info given for 'googletest-populate' and its source directory:

   /path/to/.build/_deps/googletest-src

  is not an existing non-empty directory.  Please specify one of:

   * SOURCE_DIR with an existing non-empty directory
   * DOWNLOAD_COMMAND
   * URL
   * GIT_REPOSITORY
   * SVN_REPOSITORY
   * HG_REPOSITORY
   * CVS_REPOSITORY and CVS_MODULE
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-3.27/Modules/ExternalProject.cmake:4345 (_ep_add_download_command)
  CMakeLists.txt:21 (ExternalProject_Add)


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.27/Modules/FetchContent.cmake:1650 (message):
  CMake step for googletest failed: 1
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-3.27/Modules/FetchContent.cmake:1802:EVAL:2 (__FetchContent_directPopulate)
  /usr/share/cmake-3.27/Modules/FetchContent.cmake:1802 (cmake_language)
  /usr/share/cmake-3.27/Modules/FetchContent.cmake:2016 (FetchContent_Populate)
  CMakeLists.txt:126 (FetchContent_MakeAvailable)

Can anyone shed light on this problem? The URL is already provided by FetchContent_Declare(), so why would I include this in the call to FetchContent_MakeAvailable()?

I have looked at the CMake documentation, but nothing seems to have been added to FetchContent in 3.27. I find the documentation very difficult to follow, however, so perhaps I am wrong.

Additional: I have checked with 3.26.5 and this problem does not exist

2

For reference, this has now been reported as CMake issue 25107.