Current status of released packages of ceres:
Ubuntu: libceres-dev is now 1.11 on xenial and yakkety 1.12 in zesty and 1.13 artful
Debian: libceres-dev 1.12 on stretch and buster
Fedora: ceres-solver-devel 1.11 on 24 and 25, 1.12 on 26
ROS Lunar: all platforms have a recent enough version.
ROS Kinetic: now that Wily is EOL and Xenial has 1.11, the only blocker is the fact that ceres-solver is not avaiiable on Jessie
Erratum:
Looking a bit more into it it looks like every released version of 1.11 still have problems on Ubuntu (Xenial and Yakkety), either some files are not installed (including the cmake module) or cmake cannot find the ceres headers…
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ceres-solver/+bug/1596296
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ceres-solver/+bug/1678043
Starting with 1.12 the package starts to be close to valid.
On debian Stretch: the package in fine: all the files are installed and you can find package it and link against it without issue
On ubuntu Zesty: They ceres has not been rebuilt after a new build of eigen so cmake fails throwing:
Failed to find Ceres - Found Eigen dependency, but the version of Eigen
found (3.3.2) does not exactly match the version of Eigen Ceres was
compiled with (3.3.0).
Bug report filed here