Question

I would like that a text is printed before the description of the allowed options when I print my options_description. Something like :

This program counts from 1 to 10. <--- this is what is missing

Generic options:
-h [ --help ]         Produce help message.
-v [ --version ]      Show program name/version banner and exit.

Currently I add it by hand :

if (vm.count("help")) {
    cout << "options_description\n\n" << my_options_description << endl;
    return 1;
}

Is it possible to store this directly in the options_description object ?

Answer 1

The options_description class is for describing the options, not the program. The Program_options library isn’t really intended for general-purpose documentation.

I suppose you could abuse the label:

po::options_description options(
  "This program counts from 1 to 10.\n\nGeneric options");