How to downgrade cmake / manage versions

Usage
1

Newb questions [1]

  • How do I remove cmake version x and downgrade to version y?

  • How to manage cmake versions on different linux distributions?

  1. I installed the latest version of cmake - 3.27.0-rc4 [2]. I’d like to go back a few versions and install an earlier version. It is as simple as repeating the install with 3.17.x? Or will that break things.

  2. We have a mix of developer workstations (redhat and ubuntu). They come with different cmake versions. For complicated reasons I was asked to standardize on ‘the’ version currently used by our runners, and that version is not available in the distro’s repository.

  3. I don’t mind telling them ‘download and compile’ [2] but if there is a utility that allows one to hop between versions, that would be slick.

[1] Long time sysadmin, first time having to worry about specific versions of cmake.

[2] process

2

You can simply download all the versions you want from the cmake download page and unpack them all into /opt/, they don’t interfere with each other.
To run them, you either set the PATH to one of them or call it explicitely with the full path.

3

It never occurred to me to ‘just download and run’ - thanks!