Download prebuilt CMake binaries on Linux x86_64 instead of building from source (#5715 item 6)

ci_get_cmake() downloaded the source tarball of CMake 3.5.0, 3.31.6, and
4.0.0 and compiled each one completely (including CMake's own test
helpers) with -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 as a workaround for
building old CMake with a newer one. On CI this made the
ci_cmake_options (ci_cmake_flags) job take about 11 minutes, most of it
spent building CMake itself, even though Kitware has published
ready-to-run Linux x86_64 archives for all three of these releases
since 3.20 (lowercase platform name).

On Linux x86_64, download and unpack the prebuilt
cmake-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz archive instead and point the
existing ${var} output at its bin/cmake, skipping the configure/build
steps and CMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM entirely. Keep the previous
source build as a fallback for any other platform (macOS, Linux
aarch64), since Kitware does not publish binaries for every
CMake/platform combination this project might build on.

Verify the downloaded archive against Kitware's own published checksum
before unpacking it: download cmake-<version>-SHA-256.txt alongside the
archive and run `sha256sum -c` on the matching line. A CI job that wgets
and untars a binary from a release page with no integrity check is a
supply-chain gap; Kitware has published this file for every release
since 3.20, so checking it costs one extra download and one grep.

As a separate, mechanical change: the ci_cmake_options job's container
only needed to stay on ubuntu:focal for the source build's
libssl-dev dependency and its own aging toolchain; now that the
Linux/x86_64 path never compiles CMake, drop libssl-dev from its apt
install line and move the job to ubuntu:24.04 (Ubuntu 20.04 left
standard support in May 2025). ci_clean already removes the
cmake-3.5.0/cmake-3.31.6/cmake-4.0.0 directories from the #5715 item 3
fix, and the prebuilt path reuses those same directory names, so no
further cleanup changes are needed.

Overlaps #5598, which edits the same ci_cmake_options matrix line in
ubuntu.yml; a rebase may be needed once that lands.

Verified locally: `cmake -S . -B build -DJSON_CI=On` configures cleanly
on macOS/arm64 (source-build fallback branch) and on Linux/x86_64 in an
ubuntu:24.04 Docker container (47 `ci_cmake_flag_*` targets generated,
one built and run successfully); `.github/workflows/ubuntu.yml` still
parses as valid YAML; downloaded the real v3.31.6 Linux x86_64 archive
and SHA-256 file from Kitware and confirmed the `grep | sha256sum -c`
pipeline both accepts the genuine file and is anchored to the exact
filename (not a prefix match).

CI must confirm: the prebuilt-binary path actually runs on the
ubuntu-latest/ubuntu:24.04 x86_64 runner, all `ci_cmake_options`
entries still pass with the new container's GCC, and the job's
runtime drops from roughly 11 minutes.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

.github/workflows/ubuntu.yml

@@ -97,13 +97,13 @@ jobs:
 
   ci_cmake_options:
     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
-    container: ubuntu:focal
+    container: ubuntu:24.04
     strategy:
       matrix:
         target: [ci_cmake_flags, ci_test_diagnostics, ci_test_diagnostic_positions, ci_test_noexceptions, ci_test_noimplicitconversions, ci_test_legacycomparison, ci_test_noglobaludls, ci_test_disableenumserialization, ci_test_skiplibraryversioncheck, ci_test_simdutf, ci_test_strict_nul_handling, ci_test_no_thread_local]
     steps:
       - name: Install build-essential
-        run: apt-get update ; apt-get install -y build-essential unzip wget git libssl-dev
+        run: apt-get update ; apt-get install -y build-essential unzip wget git
       - uses: actions/checkout@3d3c42e5aac5ba805825da76410c181273ba90b1 # v7.0.1
         with:
           persist-credentials: false

cmake/ci.cmake

@@ -598,17 +598,36 @@ add_custom_target(ci_benchmarks
 
 function(ci_get_cmake version var)
     set(${var} ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/cmake-${version}/bin/cmake)
-    add_custom_command(
-        OUTPUT ${${var}}
-        COMMAND wget -nc https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v${version}/cmake-${version}.tar.gz
-        COMMAND tar xfz cmake-${version}.tar.gz
-        COMMAND rm cmake-${version}.tar.gz
-        # -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 required to compile older CMake versions with CMake 4.0.0
-        COMMAND cmake -S cmake-${version} -B cmake-${version} -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5
-        COMMAND cmake --build cmake-${version} --parallel 10
-        WORKING_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}
-        COMMENT "Download CMake ${version}"
-    )
+    if(CMAKE_HOST_SYSTEM_NAME STREQUAL "Linux" AND CMAKE_HOST_SYSTEM_PROCESSOR MATCHES "^(x86_64|amd64)$")
+        # Kitware publishes a prebuilt Linux x86_64 archive for every release; unpacking it is far
+        # cheaper than compiling all of CMake (including its own test helpers) from source.
+        add_custom_command(
+            OUTPUT ${${var}}
+            COMMAND wget -nc https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v${version}/cmake-${version}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
+            COMMAND wget -nc https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v${version}/cmake-${version}-SHA-256.txt
+            # verify the archive against Kitware's published SHA-256 sums before unpacking it
+            COMMAND sh -c "grep ' cmake-${version}-linux-x86_64[.]tar[.]gz$' cmake-${version}-SHA-256.txt | sha256sum -c -"
+            COMMAND tar xfz cmake-${version}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
+            COMMAND rm cmake-${version}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz cmake-${version}-SHA-256.txt
+            COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E rm -rf cmake-${version}
+            COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E rename cmake-${version}-linux-x86_64 cmake-${version}
+            WORKING_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}
+            COMMENT "Download prebuilt CMake ${version}"
+        )
+    else()
+        # no prebuilt archive for this platform (e.g. macOS or Linux aarch64): build from source
+        add_custom_command(
+            OUTPUT ${${var}}
+            COMMAND wget -nc https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v${version}/cmake-${version}.tar.gz
+            COMMAND tar xfz cmake-${version}.tar.gz
+            COMMAND rm cmake-${version}.tar.gz
+            # -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 required to compile older CMake versions with CMake 4.0.0
+            COMMAND cmake -S cmake-${version} -B cmake-${version} -DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5
+            COMMAND cmake --build cmake-${version} --parallel 10
+            WORKING_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}
+            COMMENT "Download and build CMake ${version} from source"
+        )
+    endif()
     set(${var} ${${var}} PARENT_SCOPE)
 endfunction()