I have the following program: #include <string> #include <iostream> #include <boost/program_options.hpp> namespace po = boost::program_options; int main(char argc,char** argv) { using std::string; // Kommandozeile parsen po::options_description desc("Allowed options"); desc.add_options() ("help,H", "print help message") ; po::variables_map vm; po::store(po::parse_command_line(argc, argv, desc), vm) ; po::notify(vm); if (vm.count("help")) { std::cout << desc << "\n"; return 1; } } Results when building with 1.33.1 headers and linking against 1.33.1 libs: $ cc -c -o separator2.o -g -Wall -Wno-deprecated -pipe -O -I. -I/home/jmueller/software/boost/include separator2.cpp $ cc -lboost_program_options-gcc-d -L/home/jmueller/software/boost/lib -o separator2 separator2.o $ ./separator2 $ ./separator2 --help Allowed options: -H [ --help ] print help message Results when building with CVS headers and linking against CVS libs: $ cc -c -o separator2.o -g -Wall -Wno-deprecated -pipe -O -I. -I/home/jmueller/software/boost-cvs/include separator2.cpp $ cc -lboost_program_options-gcc-d -L/home/jmueller/software/boost-cvs/lib -o separator2 separator2.o $ ./separator2 --help Segmentation fault My compiler: $ cc -v Using built-in specs. Target: i586-suse-linux Configured with: ../configure --enable-threads=posix --prefix=/usr --with-local-prefix=/usr/local --infodir=/usr/share/info --mandir=/usr/share/man --libdir=/usr/lib --libexecdir=/usr/lib --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,fortran,java,ada --enable-checking=release --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.1.0 --enable-ssp --disable-libssp --enable-java-awt=gtk --enable-gtk-cairo --disable-libjava-multilib --with-slibdir=/lib --with-system-zlib --enable-shared --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-libstdcxx-allocator=new --without-system-libunwind --with-cpu=generic --host=i586-suse-linux Thread model: posix gcc version 4.1.0 (SUSE Linux) Has anyone an idea what's going wrong here? If you need further info, please ask.