Re: [program_options] Proposal: self-contained, header-only port of Boost Program Options library

From: Zach Laine (whatwasthataddress_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-09-12 16:00:50

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 7:30 AM Peter Dimov via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> degski wrote:
>
> > Why not try the recently proposed https://bfgroup.github.io/Lyra/ ,
> > released under the Boost Software License. Lyra is forked (from dormant
> > Clara) and maintained by Rene Rivera, who is also a contributor to Boost
> > (and Conan I believe).
>
> Lyra looks pretty good.
>

I agree with a lot of the points raised above about the problematic nature
of Boost.ProgramOptions.  I also think Lyra looks interesting.

If you're interesting in solving problems in this space, rather than doing
a straight port, here are some things I would find very helpful, not all of
which Lyra provides:

- An options-specifying API similar to Python's argparse library (
https://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html).  That covers all the
permutations I've ever needed, and then some.
- The ability to serialize the options, so that I can easily use "response
files" (files containing command line options or some serialized form of
them), and/or hand-editable config files.  I find YAML to be an attractive
format for saving such things. YMMV.

Zach