Whenever your users prefer a GUI to a text editor ? I currently an application for a configurable manufacturing process. Various parameters can be tuned interactively, and when good results are obtained, the current parameters can be saved into a configuration file. Another file stores a series of coordinates defining some reference positions used by my robotic system. There is no way that I would want to type in those coordinates by hand !!
: > that uses both libs: program_options to handle command-line : > parameters, and ptree as a storage format for its data files. : : program_options has is't own facility for that.
But it can only read it, right?
: > I agree with many of your other points. In particular ptree : > could be made leaner, and the double-indexing may well be : > overkill (I haven't looked at the implementation itself). : > But the needs the library seeks to address are very real. : : Could be. But PO already doing everything this library does. Any specific : examples of what is missing (other than some extra parsers for xml and : registry)?
The data I need to store often includes arrays, or even tree-like structures. How would I handle this with program_options ??
Using a library similar to ptree, I have also been storing complete "scene graphs" as text files (i.e. a hierarchical collection of objects, each stored with a transformation matrix, paths to mesh and texture files, and more...). The scene was edited graphically at most times, but having the textual representation was convenient for some manual touch-ups, and of course for tracking changes in a revision control system.
I haven't written a single large application where I haven't felt the need to use a library similar to ptree -- and done it with very obvious benefits.
I might not switch over to ptree, because I am not fond of some of its design aspects. But it definitely has uses that go beyond the scope of the provided "tutorial" example. Uses that program_options does not support...
All of above could (should?) be implemented more conviniently using Serialization Library. I believe program runtime parameters support has different goals and rationale. If you need bidirectional permanent store for some application state data - use serilization lib. If you need to read configuration from different sources and potencially only part of it - you need different solution. The difference is that in first case there is a direct correspondance between data in permanane storage and it's presentation at runtime within application (hence bidirectional). In later case I may have parametes comming from different sources conflict with each other and I may want ot use only 1 in 1000 of them. And this is runtime parameters domain. Intended to be covered by PO library (failed IMO, but again that's a different story) Gennadiy