# CMake 3.20.0 available for download
**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-3-20-0-available-for-download/2999
**Category:** Announcements
**Created:** [March 23, 2021, 5:36pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-3-20-0-available-for-download/2999 "2021-03-23T17:36:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Osika](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/Tom_Osika)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2021, 5:36pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-3-20-0-available-for-download/2999/1 "2021-03-23T17:36:29Z")
I am happy to announce that CMake 3.20.0 is now available for download at:
[https://cmake.org/download/](https://cmake.org/download/)
Documentation is available at:
[https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.20](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.20)
Release notes appear below and are also published at
[https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.20/release/3.20.html](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.20/release/3.20.html)
Some of the more significant changes in CMake 3.20 are:
- “cmake-presets(7)” gained support for build and test presets.
- C++23 compiler modes may now be specified via the “CXX\_STANDARD”,
“CUDA\_STANDARD”, or “OBJCXX\_STANDARD” target properties, or via the
“Compile Features” functionality’s “cxx\_std\_23” meta-feature.
- The NVIDIA HPC SDK compilers are now supported with compiler id
“NVHPC”.
- CMake’s support for Cross Compiling for Android is now merged with
the Android NDK’s toolchain file. They now have similar behavior,
though some variable names differ.
- The “cmake-file-api(7)” gained a new “toolchains” object kind that
describes the compiler used for each enabled language.
- “add\_custom\_command()” and “add\_custom\_target()” now support
“generator expressions” in their “OUTPUT” and “BYPRODUCTS” options.
- The “cmake\_path()” command was added for operations on filesystem
paths.
- The “target\_sources()” command now supports targets created by the
“add\_custom\_target()” command.
- The “ExternalProject” module “ExternalProject\_Add()” function gained
a “CONFIGURE\_HANDLED\_BY\_BUILD” option. This can be used to make
subsequent runs of the configure step be triggered by the build step
when an external project dependency rebuilds instead of always re-
running the configure step in such cases.
- “ctest(1)” gained a “–test-dir” option to specify the directory in
which to look for tests.
- The “cmake-server(7)” mode has been removed. Clients should use the
“cmake-file-api(7)” instead.
- The “WriteCompilerDetectionHeader” module has been deprecated via
policy “CMP0120”. Projects should be ported away from it.
- The “AddFileDependencies” module is deprecated. Port projects to use
“set\_property()” directly.
# CMake 3.20 Release Notes
#### Changes made since CMake 3.19 include the following.
## New Features
### Presets
- “cmake-presets(7)” gained support for build and test presets.
### Generators
- Makefile Generators, for some toolchains, now use the compiler to
extract implicit dependencies while compiling source files.
### Languages
- C++23 compiler modes may now be specified via the “CXX\_STANDARD”,
“CUDA\_STANDARD”, or “OBJCXX\_STANDARD” target properties, or via the
“Compile Features” functionality’s “cxx\_std\_23” meta-feature.
- “CUDA” language support now works when “nvcc” is a symbolic link,
for example due to a “ccache” or “colornvcc” wrapper script.
- The “CUDAARCHS” environment variable was added for initializing
“CMAKE\_CUDA\_ARCHITECTURES”. Useful in cases where the compiler
default is unsuitable for the machine’s GPU.
### Compilers
- The NVIDIA HPC SDK compilers are now supported with compiler id
“NVHPC”.
- The Intel oneAPI NextGen LLVM compilers are now supported with
compiler id “IntelLLVM”:
- Support was added for the IAR STM8 compiler.
### Platforms
- CMake’s support for Cross Compiling for Android is now merged with
the Android NDK’s toolchain file. They now have similar behavior,
though some variable names differ. User-facing changes include:
### File-Based API
- The “cmake-file-api(7)” gained a new “toolchains” object kind that
describes the compiler used for each enabled language.
### Commands
- “add\_custom\_command()” and “add\_custom\_target()” now support
“generator expressions” in their “OUTPUT” and “BYPRODUCTS” options.
- The “add\_custom\_command()” command gained “DEPFILE” support on
Makefile Generators.
- The “add\_library()” command previously prohibited imported object
libraries when using potentially multi-architecture configurations.
This mostly affected the “Xcode” generator, e.g. when targeting iOS
or one of the other device platforms. This restriction has now been
removed.
- The “cmake\_path()” command was added for operations on filesystem
paths.
- The “configure\_file()” command gained “USE\_SOURCE\_PERMISSIONS” and
“FILE\_PERMISSIONS” options to support copying of permissions of the
source file and using specified permissions respectively.
- The “file(GENERATE)” command gained a “NEWLINE\_STYLE” option to
specify how newlines are handled for the generated file.
- The “file(GENERATE)” command gained “NO\_SOURCE\_PERMISSIONS”,
“USE\_SOURCE\_PERMISSIONS”, and “FILE\_PERMISSIONS” options for
controlling the permissions of the generated file.
- The “install(FILES)” command “RENAME” option learned to support
“generator expressions”.
- The “target\_include\_directories()” command gained a new option
“AFTER”.
- The “target\_sources()” command now supports targets created by the
“add\_custom\_target()” command.
- The “try\_run()” command gained a “WORKING\_DIRECTORY” option to set
the working directory in which to run the compiled check executable.
### Variables
- The “CMAKE\_\\_BYTE\_ORDER” variable was added to provide the
target architecture byte order detected from the toolchain.
- The “CMAKE\_RUNTIME\_OUTPUT\_DIRECTORY”,
“CMAKE\_LIBRARY\_OUTPUT\_DIRECTORY”, and
“CMAKE\_ARCHIVE\_OUTPUT\_DIRECTORY” variables now support target-
dependent generator expressions.
### Properties
- The “\\_CLANG\_TIDY” target property and the associated
“CMAKE\_\\_CLANG\_TIDY” variable learned to support the “OBJC” and
“OBJCXX” languages.
- The “EXPORT\_COMPILE\_COMMANDS” target property was added for the
associated “CMAKE\_EXPORT\_COMPILE\_COMMANDS” variable to allow for
configuration of exporting compile commands per target.
- The “GENERATED” source-file property is now visible from any
directory scope, regardless of the scope in which it is set. See
policy “CMP0118”.
- The “UNITY\_BUILD\_UNIQUE\_ID” target property was added to support
generation of an identifier that is unique per source file in unity
builds. It can help to resolve duplicate symbol problems with
anonymous namespaces.
- The “WIN32\_EXECUTABLE” target property now works with Clang on
Windows.
- The “XCODE\_EMBED\_FRAMEWORKS” target property was added to tell the
“Xcode” generator to embed frameworks. Aspects of the embedding can
be customized with the “XCODE\_EMBED\_FRAMEWORKS\_PATH”,
“XCODE\_EMBED\_FRAMEWORKS\_CODE\_SIGN\_ON\_COPY”, and
“XCODE\_EMBED\_FRAMEWORKS\_REMOVE\_HEADERS\_ON\_COPY” target properties.
### Modules
- The “ExternalData” module “ExternalData\_Add\_Target()” function
gained a “SHOW\_PROGRESS \” option for controlling whether or
not to show progress output during the build.
- The “ExternalProject” module “ExternalProject\_Add()” function gained
a “CONFIGURE\_HANDLED\_BY\_BUILD” option. This can be used to make
subsequent runs of the configure step be triggered by the build step
when an external project dependency rebuilds instead of always re-
running the configure step in such cases.
- The “FindBoost” module gained a “Boost\_NO\_WARN\_NEW\_VERSIONS” option
to silence the warning about unknown dependencies for new Boost
versions.
- The “FindCUDAToolkit” module gained support for finding CUDA
toolkits when “nvcc” is a symbolic link, for example due to a
“ccache” or “colornvcc” wrapper script.
- The “FindGDAL” module has been improved to document and mark as
advanced its cache variables. There is a new
“FindGDAL\_SKIP\_GDAL\_CONFIG” variable which may be used to skip over
the “gdal-config”-based search. Users may also set
“GDAL\_ADDITIONAL\_LIBRARY\_VERSIONS” to add additional versions to the
library name search strategy.
- The “FindIntl” module now provides an imported target.
- The “FindOpenSSL” module learned to support a version range.
- The “FindPython3”, “FindPython2” and “FindPython” modules gained
options controlling how unversioned interpreter names are searched.
- The “UseJava” module “add\_jar()” command’s “GENERATE\_NATIVE\_HEADERS”
feature gained options to export the generated target.
- The “UseSWIG” module gained the capability, for Makefile and Ninja
generators, to use the “swig” tool to generate implicit
dependencies.
### Autogen
- The AUTOMOC feature now works with per-config sources.
### CTest
- “ctest(1)” gained a “–test-dir” option to specify the directory in
which to look for tests.
### CPack
- “CPack” gained the “CPACK\_THREADS” variable to control the number of
threads used for parallelized operations, such as compressing the
installer package.
- The “CPack DEB Generator” learned a new
“CPACK\_DEBIAN\_PACKAGE\_SHLIBDEPS\_PRIVATE\_DIRS” variable to specify
additional search directories for resolving private library
dependencies when using “dpkg-shlibdeps”.
- The “CPack IFW Generator” gained a new
“CPACK\_IFW\_PACKAGE\_WIZARD\_SHOW\_PAGE\_LIST” variable to control
visibility of the widget listing installer pages on the left side of
the wizard. This feature available only since QtIFW 4.0.
- The “CPack NSIS Generator” gained new “CPACK\_NSIS\_BRANDING\_TEXT” and
“CPACK\_NSIS\_BRANDING\_TEXT\_TRIM\_POSITION” variables to change the
text at the bottom of the install window and change its trim
position
- The “CPack NSIS Generator” now correctly handles Unicode characters.
If you want to have a “CPACK\_RESOURCE\_FILE\_LICENSE” with UTF-8
characters, it needs to be encoded in UTF-8 BOM.
- The “CPack NuGet Generator” gained options:
## Deprecated and Removed Features
- The “cmake-server(7)” mode has been removed. Clients should use the
“cmake-file-api(7)” instead.
- The “WriteCompilerDetectionHeader” module has been deprecated via
policy “CMP0120”. Projects should be ported away from it.
- The “TestBigEndian” module has been deprecated in favor of the
“CMAKE\_\\_BYTE\_ORDER” variable.
- The “AddFileDependencies” module is deprecated. Port projects to use
“set\_property()” directly.
- The “CPack NuGet Generator” deprecated some variables to reflect
changes in the NuGet specification:
## Other Changes
- Source file extensions must now be explicit. See policy “CMP0115”
for details.
- The “LANGUAGE” source file property now forces compilation as the
specified language. See policy “CMP0119”.
- On AIX, installation of XCOFF executables and shared libraries no
longer requires relinking to change the runtime search path from the
build-tree RPATH to the install-tree RPATH. CMake now edits the
XCOFF binaries directly during installation, as has long been done
on ELF platforms.
- With MSVC-like compilers the value of “CMAKE\_CXX\_FLAGS” no longer
contains the “/GR” flag for runtime type information by default. See
policy “CMP0117”.
- Ninja generators now transform the “DEPFILE” generated by an
“add\_custom\_command()”. See policy “CMP0116” for details.
- The precompiled Linux binaries provided on [cmake.org](https://cmake.org/download/) have changed
their naming pattern to “cmake-$ver-linux-$arch”, where “$arch” is
either “x86\_64” or “aarch64”.
- The precompiled Windows binaries provided on [cmake.org](https://cmake.org/download/) have changed
their naming pattern to “cmake-$ver-windows-$arch”, where “$arch” is
either “x86\_64” or “i386”.
* * *
Changes made since CMake 3.20.0-rc5:
Adriaan de Groot (1):
- Help: Fix typos in presets schema field descriptions
Brad King (3):
- CMP0118: Fix NEW behavior when looking up target sources
- Help: Document CMP0118 requirement for boolean values
- CMake 3.20.0
Craig Scott (1):
- Help: CMAKE\_NO\_BUILTIN\_CHRPATH applies to XCOFF too