The documentation for the writing of output as a function of time appears to be out of date.
The example code shown in the documentation https://bout-dev.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user_docs/bout_options.html#time-dependence does not compile, but will compile if the final line is modified to
// Append data to file
bout::OptionsIO::create({{"file", "time.nc"}, {"append", true}})->write(data);
Including information in the documentation explaining how the output interfaces with MPI would be useful. I.e., explaining whether or not these calls should be made collectively or on a single process.