What modern C++ libraries should be in my toolbox?

Question

I've been out of the C++ game for about 10 years and I want to get back in and start on a commercial app. What libraries are in use these days?

User interface (e.g, wxWidgets, Qt)
Database
General purpose (e.g. Boost, Loki, STL)
Threading
Testing
Network/sockets

I looking to be cross-platform compatible (as much as possible out-of-the-box).

What libraries to do you rely on? What features do they provide that make them "indispensable"?

See my answer below for a summary.

score 202 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 01 '17 at 09:31

202

Cross-platform libraries that are free for commercial (or non-commercial) applications

Feel free to expand this list

General Purpose
Boost
Loki
MiLi
POCO
STL (of course)
STXXL (STL re-implementation for extra large data sets)
Qt
ASL
JUCE

Audio
- FMOD
- Synthesis ToolKit
Database
- SOCI
- OTL
- LMDB++
Design
- IoC Frameworks
Documents
- LibreOffice API
- PoDoFo
Graphics
- Allegro
- OGRE
- SFML
GUI
- FLTK
- GTK
- Qt
- Qwt
- wxWidgets
- VTK
Hashing
- MurmurHash3
Imaging
- Boost.GIL
- CImg
- DevIL
- EasyBMP
- FreeImage
- ITK
- OpenCV
Logging
Mocking
- Google Mock
- Hippo Mocks
- Turtle (C++ mock object library for Boost)
Multimedia
- openframework
- Cinder
- SDL
Networking
- ACE
- Boost.Asio
- ICE
Testing
Threading
- Boost.Thread
Version Control
- libgit2
Web Application Framework
- CppCMS
- Wt
XML
- Libxml2
- pugixml
- RapidXml
- TinyXML
- Xerces-C++

Links to additional lists of open source C++ libraries:

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/links/libs

edited Nov 01 '17 at 09:31

onqtam

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answered Apr 23 '09 at 15:02

Ryan Emerle

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Would be cool if you show XML Libs too... – Oliver Nov 10 '13 at 22:34
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@OliverStutz I've added some XML libraries. Credit goes to [this excellent answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/9387612/1227469) which contains an analysis of which one to use. – JBentley Dec 01 '13 at 20:32
@JBentley thanks, i use Pugixml, figured out that this is pretty awesome, small, compileable... :-) – Oliver Dec 06 '13 at 13:06
@@AfzaalAhmadZeeshan The Synthesis Toolkit appears to match the criteria for this question/answer, being cross-platform and free. I've added it back in for now. Can you explain why you think it is unsuitable for this list? – JBentley Jan 22 '14 at 02:26
I think, the boost library is the best for the general purpose. – Mahmut EFE Apr 16 '15 at 17:31
dlib should be in this list. It works great with OpenCV and includes some state of the art algorithms. – cagatayodabasi Dec 06 '15 at 23:09
Everybody must try all of them! – DenisKolodin Jul 04 '16 at 00:31
since a while *ranges-v3* is one of the first coming to my mind when asked. – Patrick Fromberg Jun 20 '18 at 23:41
Juce price list does not look free. – ar2015 Sep 23 '18 at 01:14

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 07 '12 at 06:56

31

Sorry for repeating some of the stuff already written, but:

UI: Qt
Database: SOCI
General purpose: Boost, Loki, STLSoft Libraries, ASL
Threading: Boost.Thread
Testing: Boost.Test
Build tools: Boost.Build, SCons

(Should at least get you started)

edited Jun 07 '12 at 06:56

Wladimir Palant

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answered Apr 22 '09 at 18:24

rjnilsson

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score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:55

11

On Windows...

ATL for COM development WTL for user interface

answered Apr 22 '09 at 17:55

FrodoH

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score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 28 '09 at 07:55

10

CGAL is an excellent c++ library for computational geometry

www.cgal.org

answered Apr 28 '09 at 07:55

yang-qu

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score 8 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:52

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http://loki-lib.sourceforge.net/ might also be good addition.

It's another template library, which introduces typelists, and implementations for various design patterns.

I never used it, but I read Alexandrescu's book to get a better understanding of templates.

answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:52

Ronny Brendel

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Loki's ScopeGuard will **change your life**. Seriously. You'll be stronger, faster, and more attractive to the opposite sex. – j_random_hacker Apr 22 '09 at 16:26

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:33

5

CppUnit for unit testing and test driven development

answered Apr 22 '09 at 15:33

Andrew Stein

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 24 '10 at 11:41

Besides all the great libraries already listed, I find the combination of xerces for XML (including XSD validation) and xalan for XSLT to be useful (xalan is built on top of xerces). AFAIK neither QT or POCO have XSLT functionality (unless it's been added since I last used them).

What modern C++ libraries should be in my toolbox?

7 Answers7

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