Question

In C, when using the FILE struct from stdio.h, the current working directory will be relative to the build directory if the programmer attempts to open a file.

Is there a setting of some sort (maybe a compiler flag) which I can use to allow the CWD to be set to the source directory at compile or run time? Preferably a method that is cross-platform from Windows to *nix, but if that’s not doable let’s just say *nix.

I’m working in Linux currently, with GCC/G++, using qmake without the Qt libraries.

Also, the main reason I’m using the C FILE IO method as opposed to C++’s std::ifstream is just personal preference, in case anyone asks.

Answer 1

In your .pro file you can define the source directory as a macro, then chdir() to it in your source code.

# myproject.pro
DEFINES+=SRCDIR=\\\"$$PWD\\\"

# myapp.cpp
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    if (chdir(SRCDIR)) {
        perror("chdir to " SRCDIR);
    }
    // ... rest of code
}

Getting it to work on Windows might involve fiddling with the number of backslashes in the .pro file.