On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:42:02 +0200 Stephan Beal sgbeal@googlemail.com wrote:
i've been programming professionally for going on 20 years now, and i have _never_ seen a source tree which has files from _outside_ the source tree managed by build/project files within the source tree.
Same here... ;-)
In my own software where i have had to deal with this problem, i took a very simple approach with which i never had any unexpected problems/behaviours:
a) The project file's directory (where we load it from) is the virtual root. b) Paths to files under that root are stored relative. c) Paths to outside that root are stored absolute.
I totally agree with you. That would be the best way.
Using relative paths would solve a second problem too. If the project file is used by linux and windows users, absolute paths are incompatible. But with paths relative to the project file's directory, window users could use the project file too.