At the time of writing, following "competitors" are known to me:
Plus, some inspiration comes from cvs, svn, svnkit, spring and other projects.
When creating this comparison table, I used this (in french) as the base.
commons-cli | args4j | args-inject | |
license | MIT | Apache | Apache |
java version | 1.5 | 1.4 | 1.5 |
declaration of options | runtime | annottations | both runtime and annottations |
multi-value support | yes | yes | yes |
embedded help | yes | yes | yes |
custom value types | no | yes | yes |
internationalization | yes | no | no |
subcommands | no | no | yes |
POSIX like options | yes | no | no |
GNU like long options | yes | yes | yes |
Java like properties | yes | yes | yes |
automatic unmarshalling | no | yes | yes |
Note: should you find any mistakes here, please let me know