The most common situation is when you want to install the latest version of cmake, but your Operating System's repositories are not updated. For example, in my case I have a laptop running Ubuntu 16.04, and when I executed the command sudo apt install cmake the installed version was 3.5.1; instead of, 3.12.3 which is the current version at cmake.org.
How can I get the latest version?
Well, we can install it by following one of this methods:
A. Building and Installing (recommended)
A-1. Uninstall the default version provided by Ubuntu's package manager:
sudo apt remove cmake
sudo apt purge --auto-remove cmakeA-2. Go to the official CMake webpage, then download and extract the latest version. Update the version and build variables in the following command to get the desired version:
version=3.12
build=3
mkdir ~/temp
cd ~/temp
wget https://cmake.org/files/v$version/cmake-$version.$build.tar.gz
tar -xzvf cmake-$version.$build.tar.gz
cd cmake-$version.$build/
A-3. Install the extracted source by running:
./bootstrap
make -j4
sudo make install
A-4. Test your new cmake version.
$ cmake --version
Results of cmake --version:
cmake version 3.12.X
CMake suite maintained and supported by Kitware (kitware.com/cmake).
B. Using binary files (cmake-gui wont work well)
B-1. Uninstall the default version provided by Ubuntu's package manager as in A-1.
B-2. Go to the official CMake webpage（https://cmake.org/download/）, then download and install the latest .sh version in opt/cmake. Update the version and build variables in the following command to get the desired version:
version=3.12
build=3
mkdir ~/temp
cd ~/temp
wget https://cmake.org/files/v$version/cmake-$version.$build-Linux-x86_64.sh
sudo mkdir /opt/cmake
sudo sh cmake-$version.$build-Linux-x86_64.sh --prefix=/opt/cmake
B-3. Add the installed binary link to /usr/local/bin/cmake by running this:
sudo ln -s /opt/cmake/bin/cmake /usr/local/bin/cmake
B-4. Test your new cmake version as in A-4.