Executable execution path. Does it depends of the place the executable is called from?
- by Valkea
as I'm still a new Linux user, I still discover some behaviours and I'm unable to tell if they are "normals" or not. I searched the Internet but as I can't really find an answer I guess it's time to ask here.
Few weeks ago I installed a small game called "Machinarium" and I played it... but few days later when I wanted to continue my game I was unable to make the game start correctly. And as I didn't had the time to search I given up.
But yesterday as I was working on a program of mine, I had the exactly same behaviour. So I searched a bit and I discovered that when using Nautilus with the "List view", I was able to run the program (ie: the program does find the sound, images etc resources) when I was literally "inside" the executable folder, but unable when I was in a parent folder and expanding it to the executable folder to run it.
To illustrate the behaviour here are two screen shots.
It doesn't works if the executable is double clicked from here
It does works if the executable is double clicked from here
This is indeed the same "place", but the Nautilus view is slightly different as the current folder is not the same and it seems to make a difference for the program.
Furthermore, when I create a menu items via System Settings/Main Menu to the executable, it behaves just like if the executable can't find the resources (that's why I was unable to play Machinarium the second time as I created a menu short-cut after my first game).
So I asked my program to generate a text file at it's root when running, and I started to launch it from different "parent" folders to see where is generated the text file. Each time the file was generated on the top folder of the current Nautilus view.
I was expected to see it appears in the same folder of the executable (well not as I was guessing what as happening, but before that I would have expected to see it appears in the exe folder).
Does anyone can explain me why it does works like this (I guess it's normal) ?
How I'm supposed to solve this when creating programs (Should I detect the executable path in my C++ code or should I organize the resources files another way than on windows ?)
