Dolphin starts programs with a wrong current directory

[James Tyrer]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 12/09/2009 01:21 AM, Duncan wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras posted on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:19:30 +0200 as
>> excerpted:
>> 
>>> It's a program I wrote myself (University assignment) and the
>>> files in question are an SSL certificate file and a private key
>>> file.  It usually works on every other file manager, except for
>>> Dolphin, which lend me to believe that Dolphin is doing it wrong.
>>> Common sense dictates that the current directory should always be
>>> the directory "you are in"; if you are in it in the CLI or a file
>>> manager shouldn't matter.  The current directory should always be
>>> "where you are now".
>> You're thinking the MSWormOS way, not the Unix/POSIX/Linux way.  In
>> *ix, the PWD (present working directory or print working directory,
>> see the shell builtin of the same name) is usually[...]
> 
> Thanks for the lengthy explanation, though unneeded in my case.  I
> use Unix systems and program for them for 15 years now and pretty
> much know what PWD is.
> 
> In any event, and IMO, "current directory" is the current directory 
> (duh).  So to ask in another way, if I go to /usr/local in Dolphin, 
> Dolphin has no reason to consider the current directory as being
> $HOME while I'm actually in /usr/local.
> 
> Don't take me wrong.  All your points are perfectly valid and reflect
>  accepted (some de-facto, some real) standards.  But you missed the
> point that there's also a de-facto standard of having "current
> directory" being the directory "you are in right now."  Dolphin
> breaks that "standard."
> 
The Dolphin file manager part is a GUI.  You can't expect that the GUI 
will operate like the CLI.  Normally, GUI applications are started from 
a menu or icon and there isn't really a $PWD so a default directory is 
used.  In KDE4 this is the Documents path, or you can select a different 
working directory by setting it in the *.desktop file.  It is probably 
misusing a GUI file manager to open a /bin directory and click on the 
icon for an executable -- although it will work.

If you do this properly, it will work on either the GUI or a CLI.

IAC, you should have your executable file in a /bin directory.  System 
wide in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin directory.  Data should not be stored 
in these directories.  This means that the executable needs to know 
where the date is.  System wide data would go in the 
/usr/share/<app_name> or /usr/local/share/<app_name> directory.  Private 
user data has previously gone in a $HOME/.<app_name> directory but the 
new XDG standard suggests $HOME/.local/share/<app_name> for the directory.

If you follow the above, there is no need for the executable to know the 
$PWD to look for data files because they will always be in the proper 
place and it will not matter how you start the program.

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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