Lightweight GNU readline alternative

There is replxx, a BSD licensed alternative to readline. It works in Linux, BSD, Solaris and Windows. It has support for features you expect from interactive console programs, namely:

• line editing
• history
• syntax highlighting
• hints
• UTF-8
• user defined key bindings (supporting (shift/ctrl)F1 - F12)
• multi-threaded print

This is an admirable goal I think :-)

Perhaps Linenoise, libedit/editline or tecla would fit the bill?

Of those probably libedit is the most widely used - e.g. postgreqsql client shell and various BSD utilities for Kerberos and ntp (although for the upstream sources it may not be the default line editing library for compilation due the to widespread use of libreadline on Linux). There are a couple of slightly different versions of libedit/editline as you'll see if you read some of those references and do some further research.

Cheers, and good luck with your project.