Add recommendations for option parsing

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli

Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Research lightweight C++ option-parsing solutions and compare their dependency, header, and linking costs against the stated constraints. Done means documenting a clear recommendation for lightweight C++ libraries, while noting when boost::program_options remains appropriate.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

In C++ my experience says:

  • If it is okay to use boost, use boost::program_options, it is a solid library.
  • It is often not okay to use boost. The headers alone are > 50 MB 🙀 and contain > 13,000 files. And boost::program_options requires linking a precompiled library. This is massive weight and complexity for a build system just to parse options.
  • So for lightweight C++ libs that might not otherwise have any dependencies we need to recommend a very lightweight option parsing solution.

/cc @GretaCB @joto @mapbox/core-tech @danpat

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