Boost.Program_options vs CLI11

Boost.Program_options

Boost.org program_options module (by boostorg)

CLI

Source Code

boost.org

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CLI11

CLI11 is a command line parser for C++11 and beyond that provides a rich feature set with a simple and intuitive interface. (by CLIUtils)

CLI cli-parser Cpp11 no-dependencies

Source Code

cliutils.github.io

Docs

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Boost.Program_options		CLI11
	Project
1	Mentions	12
97	Stars	3,087
-	Growth	2.9%
5.5	Activity	8.5
10 days ago	Latest Commit	7 days ago
C++	Language	C++
-	License	GNU General Public License v3.0 or later

The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Boost.Program_options

Posts with mentions or reviews of Boost.Program_options. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-03-09.

Boost.Program_options VS abseil-cpp - a user suggested alternative
2 projects | 9 Mar 2023

CLI11

Posts with mentions or reviews of CLI11. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-13.

C++ Game Utility Libraries: for Game Dev Rustaceans
9 projects | dev.to | 13 Mar 2024

Book: CLI11 book
Command line interface library
3 projects | /r/Cplusplus | 24 Mar 2023

The most feature-rich C++ CLI library is CLI11. Other popular choices include Boost.ProgramOptions, argparse, cxxopts and others.
Create Elegant C++ Spatial Processing Pipelines in WebAssembly
8 projects | dev.to | 10 Feb 2023

CLI11 provides all the features you expect in a powerful command line parser, with a beautiful, minimal syntax and no dependencies beyond C++11. itk-wasm enhances CLI11 with a itk::wasm::Pipeline wrapper to support efficient execution in multiple Wasm contexts, scientific data structures, and lovely colorized help output 🥰.
CLI11 is making all the other options libraries look bad, does anyone have a comparison from experience?
6 projects | /r/cpp | 25 Aug 2022

Does anyone have feedback on the possible problems with CLI11 and comparisons to any other thing available in the wild not limited to the choices I tried before? Looks like a very well-thought out library according to its documentation: https://cliutils.github.io/CLI11/book/
Creating a CLI in C++
3 projects | /r/cpp | 27 Apr 2022

I'd recommend to use CLI11. I was baffled by how much it can do.
3 Ways To Parse Command Line Arguments in C++: Quick, Do-It-Yourself, Or Comprehensive
9 projects | /r/cpp | 4 Nov 2021

I use https://github.com/jarro2783/cxxopts.git or https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11, or if boost is involved anyway, boost.program_options.
Carregando dependências em projetos C++ usando o CMake
3 projects | dev.to | 14 Jul 2021

get_dependency(spdlog "https://github.com/gabime/spdlog" v1.8.5) get_dependency(CLI11 "https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11" v1.9.1) get_dependency(GoogleTest "https://github.com/google/googletest" master)
cmdlime - possibly the least verbose command line parsing library for C++17
3 projects | /r/cpp | 20 May 2021

Maybe https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11? I really like this one and it looks like it supports TOML
Why no standard library support for command line parsing?
2 projects | /r/cpp | 27 Jan 2021

I found https://github.com/jarro2783/cxxopts to be useful and https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11 to be really helpful if you need an non-trivial interface.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Boost.Program_options and CLI11 you can also consider the following projects:

jarro2783/cxxopts - Lightweight C++ command line option parser

gflags - The gflags package contains a C++ library that implements commandline flags processing. It includes built-in support for standard types such as string and the ability to define flags in the source file in which they are used. Online documentation available at:

clipp - easy to use, powerful & expressive command line argument parsing for modern C++ / single header / usage & doc generation

Vcpkg - C++ Library Manager for Windows, Linux, and MacOS

conan - Conan - The open-source C and C++ package manager

args - A simple header-only C++ argument parser library. Supposed to be flexible and powerful, and attempts to be compatible with the functionality of the Python standard argparse library (though not necessarily the API).

Ncurses - ncurses Git mirror

docopt.cpp - C++11 port of docopt