Ninja backend behaviour for build command working diretory

[fsfod]

I noticed generated cmds for buildcommands emitted by the ninja backend don't implicitly have the working directory set to the the directory of ninja file there run from. I think you implicitly get this for free in gmake and visual studio backends. I have workspace ninja\solution file one directory lower than the project ones so plain paths in my build commands fail with the Ninja backend, while work for gmake and vs2026,
Should ninja backend be fixed or is default working directory not something to rely on and just convert all the paths to use tokens?

[nickclark2016]

Can you provide a MCRE so I can see exactly what you're talking about?

[fsfod]

Heres a little buildable example showing it ninja-buildcommands.zip . It should be buildable on Linux as well if you swap the commented path around.

workspace "Root"
  configurations { "Debug", "Release" }
  targetdir "build/obj/%{cfg.buildcfg}/%{prj.name}"
  objdir "build/obj/%{cfg.buildcfg}/%{prj.name}"

project "AppTool"
  kind "ConsoleApp"
  location "build"
  language "C"
  files {
    "src/tool.c",
  }

project "App2"
  kind "ConsoleApp"
  location "build"
  targetdir "bin/%{cfg.buildcfg}"
  language "C"
  dependson { "AppTool" }
  includedirs {
  	"%{prj.location}/generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/"
  }
  files {
    "src/main.c",
    "src/data.txt.in",
    "%{prj.location}/generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/header.h"
  }

  prebuildcommands{
  	-- this would also be created in the wrong directory for ninja as well
  	"{MKDIR} generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/",
  }

  filter "files:**.txt.in"
    buildmessage "Generating header.h with AppTool"
    buildinputs {
      "%{prj.location}/obj/%{cfg.buildcfg}/AppTool/AppTool%{cfg.buildtarget.extension}"
    }
    buildcommands {
      -- Another bug quoted paths not escaped correctly for Ninja or windows CLI build backends.
       --'"obj/%{cfg.buildcfg}/AppTool/AppTool%{cfg.buildtarget.extension}" %{file.abspath} generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/header.h',
      'obj\\%{cfg.buildcfg}\\AppTool\\AppTool%{cfg.buildtarget.extension} %{file.abspath} generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/header.h',
    }
    buildoutputs {
      "%{prj.location}/generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/header.h",
    }

[Jarod42]

prebuildcommands{
  	-- this would also be created in the wrong directory for ninja as well
  	"{MKDIR} generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/",
  }

should be

prebuildcommands { "{MKDIR} %[generated/%{cfg.buildcfg}/]",
  }

See path-in-commands

Similarly for buildcommands.

[fsfod]

Believe it not, doing that makes the mkdir cmd from ninja create a directory in the root of the drive while the workspace directory is 4 directories deep. I thought it wasn't doing anything, but i checked Procmon.

[nickclark2016]

Interesting. Can you share the generated Ninja file(s)?

[fsfod]

Here are the ninja-files.zip

[nickclark2016]

Ooh yeah. I'm seeing the issue. This one is a bit tricky.

[alex-rass-88]

May be #2604