Argp++:

A C++ class library wrapper around the GNU C-language argp options parsing utility for command-line programs. The GNU documentation for the native argp library is available here:

https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Argp.html

Introduction:

For an excellent introduction to using GNU argp in programs written in C, please read:

"Step-by-Step into Argp" (Copyright © 2010, 2015 by Ben Asselstine)

which you can find here: http://www.nongnu.org/argpbook/

The source code in this package consists of four C++ files:

• include/argpp.hpp
• include/argppbaseimpl.hpp
• src/argpp.cpp
• src/argppbaseimpl.cpp

There is a dependency on the header argp.h, otherwise no additional libraries are necessary to use the code.

Installation:

For installation instructions for this package, please refer to the INSTALL file.

It is probably easiest just to add all the sources to a new or existing project; then there is nothing to install. ;)

There are several demo programs using argp++ located in the examples subfolder. These are not built by default. make examples will build them and leave the executables directly in the examples folder if you have run configure and make. You do NOT have to install libargp++ as a shared library first in order to build the example programs.

Using Argp++ in your own programs:

Either way, using the sources directly or as a library, just add #include "argpp.hpp" (or #include <argpp.hpp> if you installed it that way) to your code AFTER any other #include lines (see below about bug...), define a class of your own derived from argpp::ArgppBase, implement at least the pure virtual function ArgppBase::parserImpl and any others you might need, and off you go! The demo programs in the examples subfolder will get you started.

There are some traps to avoid when mixing C++ object variables and C code such as native argp functions, which can call exit at times with total unawareness of any automatic C++ variable objects whose destructors might need to be called beforehand. Special care was taken not to fall into that trap in designing the base class.

There is also a very annoying bug which was discovered when the argp.h header file is included before some of the STL headers and compiling with C++11 functionality. You can read about this here:

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16907

Apparently, this has recently been fixed, but there are plenty of platforms which might not be completely up-to-date here. Writing #include <argp.h> as the last header included by argpp.hpp seems to mitigate the effects of this bug.

NOTE: There is no man page and no info for this package. All documentation is contained either in the above-mentioned files, in the doc folder, or in the source code itself. For more details, please consult the INSTALL file as well as the HTML documentation which was generated by Doxygen, available here:

http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/

C++ language standard:

The header argpp.hpp has macros in place which will discover how the code is being compiled. If C++11 support is available, it will be used by default. In particular, std::unique_ptr<T> is used to hold a pointer to the root parser instance in a global variable. If C++11 is not available, a substitute DeleteHelper class is used instead. Otherwise, none of the more advanced C++11 syntax is used in order to make it possible to compile the code on older platforms (but hopefully not TOO old...)

Please read the other information in the HTML docs (located in the doc/html subfolder) for further details about the design and use of the library. The file "ChangeLog" will contain more details about the latest developments.

Credits and license:

Project URL: https://github.com/bobhairgrove/Argp-plus-plus

Version 0.9.0 is the initial public release. Please see the files COPYING and COPYING.LESSER for complete license details.

Written by Robert Hairgrove. Copyright (c) 2017 by Robert Hairgrove and the Free Software Foundation. All feature requests and bug reports are welcome and should be sent to Robert Hairgrove, code@roberthairgrove.com, or you can create an issue at Github under the project URL mentioned above.

--

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by 
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or 
(at your option) any later version. This library is distributed in the 
hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the 
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. You should 
have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with 
this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA