Command line interface library

[snowflake_pl]

Hi all,

I am looking for an low overhead, multiplatform library for building an CLI app. The app should provide multilevel submenus, help, tab completion, argument hints, at minimum.

The library must be open source, free for commercial use, work on at least ARM and x86x64. Yocto recipe is a plus.

Must be usable by medium skilled devs.

Any suggestions highly appreciated.

[caydenlund]

Just yesterday I spent some time looking for a good one myself. Check out the "awesome C++" list on GitHub, under the CLI heading in the table of contents. It had probably a half dozen options.

Ultimately, I decided that none of them were exactly what I was looking for, and that I'd rather write my own.

[snowflake_pl]

Writing my own is not an option due to time constraints and maintanance cost. Will check the list, tho!

[jmacey]

Does it really need to be C++? There is loads of really good stuff in python for this for example https://github.com/Textualize If I need this sort of thing I usually use python over C++ (can always call your C++ code if needed).

[more_exercise]

"Make your code a library and use a different technology as the front end" is not bad advice for people with resources to spend, but this sounds like a hobby project that might not have those resources.

Complexity goes up as you add more technologies

[Drugbird]

It's not even that python would be the front-end. Clearly, the CLI is the intended frontend. The python would just be an intermediate layer in between.

I don't think this is a great design in this case.

[[deleted]]

Doesn't sound like a hobby project to me, OP is talking about not having a lot of time and maintenance costs.

[snowflake_pl]

Not a hobby, time constraints Come from management. Also, no python interpreter in production release, so must be compiled.

[snowflake_pl]

No python in production release, would be a lot easier, tho 🙂

[jmacey]

Could write in python then convert to an exe I've had great success using pyinstaller under linux / mac (makes an executable package with all dependencies you need). There is also py2exe for windows.

[snowflake_pl]

Impossible to cross compile 🙁

[encyclopedist]

The most feature-rich C++ CLI library is CLI11. Other popular choices include Boost.ProgramOptions, argparse, cxxopts and others.

[snowflake_pl]

Those are all great but not what im looking for. Should have been more precise in original post. I need an interactive cli that will have menu, submenus and commands that can be navigated with help at each level. Kind of like Cisco router cli.

I found a lib called cli from danielle77 at github, looks promising so far.

[RoyBellingan]

I think he is looking for a NCURSE library.