Outcome started life in 2014, entered Boost as Boost.Outcome in 2018, and therefore was amongst the very first of the major alternative error handling frameworks to standard exception throws in C++. Since then, and sometimes in reaction to Outcome’s choice of design, alternative frameworks have appeared. This page tries to give a fairly even handed summary of those alternatives, and how they compare to Outcome in this author’s opinion.

These are listed in order of approximate availability to the C++ ecosystem i.e. in order of appearance.

1. std exception throws

   Advantages and disadvantages of C++ exception throws

2. std error codes

   Advantages and disadvantages of std::error_code

3. std expected

   Advantages and disadvantages of std::expected<T, E>

4. Outcome (proposed std result)

   Advantages and disadvantages of Outcome and its proposed std::result<T>

5. LEAF

   Advantages and disadvantages of Lightweight Error Augmentation Framework

My thanks to Emil Dotchevski for reviewing this summary and providing notes.