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

From: Zach Laine (whatwasthataddress_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-09-17 16:05:01

On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 12:02 AM Vicram Rajagopalan via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 11:01 AM Zach Laine via Boost
> <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > I agree with a lot of the points raised above about the problematic
> nature
> > of Boost.ProgramOptions.  I also think Lyra looks interesting.
>
> Regarding Lyra, I took a look at the Github repo a few weeks ago, but
> as far as I could tell, it hasn't gained much traction. That was just my
> impression from the low number of stars, watches, issues, and pull
> requests. Are there any particular reasons that y'all recommend Lyra
> in particular?
>

I only just heard about it in this thread.

> Granted, development/maintenance does seem to be active, which
> is a good sign in my book.
>
> > 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:
>
> I suppose what I'd really like to see is a de-facto standard; right now,
> it doesn't seem that one exists. Given that Boost.ProgramOptions is
> not a particularly good example to follow, the best use of my time
> may be to contribute to a healthy project. cxxopts is one that caught
> my eye, as it seems more well-known than most other similar
> projects. Does anyone have any impressions of cxxopts (or others)?
>

IMO, what made libfmt (which became C++20's std::format) a success is that
it took an existing and popular API for string formatting (from Python) and
implemented it efficiently.  If you were to do the same thing with Python's
argparse, I think the result would be similar.  I say this because all the
libraries above, and probably others besides, are each taking a particular
point of view, API-wise, that has not necessarily caught on.  Perhaps one
of them will, I don't know.  I *do* know that the argparse API has been
stable for years, and covers every scenario for handling command line
arguments that I have seen.

Zach