Look when I install Laravel (today February 04, 2020), reading the official documentation from its page: Installing Laravel
That is, by running the following script:
composer global require laravel/installer
I assumed that I was going to install the latest version or the stable version, but version 3.0.1 was installed. So how do I install the current version on my computer? Not in a certain project.
I understand that if I want to create a project with a certain version I can execute one of the following two scripts:
composer create-project laravel/laravel appName "5.1.*"
composer create-project laravel/laravel="5.1.*" appName
Or if I want to create a project with the version that I have installed on my computer, which is much more simplified:
laravel new blog
That is, I would like to use this last script and not the other two above.
What you are installing is the Laravel Installer , not Laravel itself. Indeed, as of today (February 04, 2020 -not 2019-) that is the latest version of said installer.
If you follow the documentation you will get the latest version of Laravel, don't hesitate, unless you have some old cache from the repositories on your machine (I don't think that's your case).
To install the latest version of Laravel (without its installer), just run this line, assuming you're using Linux:
To install a specific version, vary this line a bit: