How to get current relative directory of your Makefile

Question

I have a several Makefiles in app specific directories like this    project1 apps app typeA Makefile  project1 apps app typeB Makefile  project1 apps app typeC Makefile   Each Makefile includes a  inc file in this path one level up    project1 apps app rules inc   Inside app rules inc I m setting the destination of where I want the binaries to be placed when built  I want all binaries to be in their respective app type path    project1 bin app typeA    I tried using   CURDIR   like this   OUTPUT PATH    project1 bin   CURDIR    but instead I got the binaries buried in the entire path name like this   notice the redundancy    project1 bin projects users bob project1 apps app typeA   What can I do to get the  current directory  of execution so that I can know just the app typeX in order to put the binaries in their respective types folder

User · Answer

As far as I m aware this is the only answer here that works correctly with spaces   space    space    CURRENT PATH      subst   lastword   notdir   MAKEFILE LIST       subst   space     space    shell realpath    strip   MAKEFILE LIST         It essentially works by escaping space characters by substituting     for      which allows Make to parse it correctly  and then it removes the filename of the makefile in MAKEFILE LIST by doing another substitution so you re left with the directory that makefile is in  Not exactly the most compact thing in the world but it does work   You ll end up with something like this where all the spaces are escaped     info CURRENT PATH     CURRENT PATH    CURRENT PATH    mnt c Users foobar gDrive P  roje  cts we  b sitecompiler

User · Answer

Here is one-liner to get absolute path to your Makefile file using shell syntax   SHELL     bin bash CWD      shell cd -P --    shell dirname --   0     amp  amp  pwd -P    And here is version without shell based on  0xff answer   CWD      abspath   patsubst        dir   abspath   lastword   MAKEFILE LIST         Test it by printing it  like   cwd           echo   CWD

User · Answer

The shell function   You can use shell function  current dir     shell pwd   Or shell in combination with notdir  if you need not absolute path  current dir     notdir   shell pwd     Update   Given solution only works when you are running make from the Makefile s current directory  As  Flimm noted      Note that this returns the current working directory  not the parent directory of the Makefile  For example  if you run cd    make -f  home username project Makefile  the current dir variable will be    not  home username project     Code below will work for Makefiles invoked from any directory   mkfile path      abspath   lastword   MAKEFILE LIST    current dir      notdir   patsubst        dir   mkfile path

User · Answer

Example for your reference  as below   The folder structure might be as     Where there are two Makefiles  each as below   sample Makefile test Makefile   Now  let us see the content of the Makefiles      sample Makefile   export ROOT DIR   PWD   all      echo   ROOT DIR        MAKE  -C test      test Makefile   all      echo   ROOT DIR      echo  make test ends here      Now  execute the sample Makefile  as   cd sample make      OUTPUT    echo  home symphony sample  home symphony sample make -C test make 1   Entering directory   home symphony sample test  echo  home symphony sample  home symphony sample echo  make test ends here    make test ends here   make 1   Leaving directory   home symphony sample test    Explanation  would be that the parent home directory can be stored in the environment-flag  and can be exported  so that it can be used in all the sub-directory makefiles

User · Answer

update 2018 03 05 finnaly I use this     shellPath  echo  PWD   echo   0         process absolute path shellPath1  echo  PWD   shellPath2  echo   0      if     shellPath2 0 1             then     shellPath   shellPath2  fi     It can be executed correct in relative path or absolute path  Executed correct invoked by crontab  Executed correct in other shell   show example  a sh print self path    root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz     more  root test a sh shellPath  echo  PWD   echo   0         process absolute path shellPath1  echo  PWD   shellPath2  echo   0      if     shellPath2 0 1             then     shellPath   shellPath2  fi  echo  shellPath  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz     more  root b sh shellPath  echo  PWD   echo   0         process absolute path shellPath1  echo  PWD   shellPath2  echo   0      if     shellPath2 0 1             then     shellPath   shellPath2  fi   shellPath test a sh  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz       b sh  root test  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz      root b sh  root test  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz     cd    root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz       b sh  root   test  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz     test a sh  root test  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz     cd test  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz test     a sh  root test    root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz test   cd    root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz      root test a sh  root test  root izbp1a7wyzv7b5hitowq2yz          old   I use this   MAKEFILE PATH      PWD     0        It can show correct if executed in other shell and other directory

User · Answer

I tried many of these answers  but on my AIX system with gnu make 3 80 I needed to do some things old school   Turns out that lastword  abspath and realpath were not added until 3 81      mkfile path      word   words   MAKEFILE LIST     MAKEFILE LIST   mkfile dir    shell cd   shell dirname   mkfile path    pwd  current dir    notdir   mkfile dir     As others have said  not the most elegant as it invokes a shell twice  and it still has the spaces issues   But as I don t have any spaces in my paths  it works for me regardless of how I started make    make -f    wherever makefile make -C    wherever make -C   wherever cd    wherever  make   All give me wherever for current dir and the absolute path to wherever for mkfile dir

User · Answer

I like the chosen answer  but I think it would be more helpful to actually show it working than explain it    tmp makefile path test sh     bin bash -eu    Create a testing dir temp dir  tmp makefile path test proj dir  temp dir dir1 dir2 dir3 mkdir -p  proj dir    Create the Makefile in  proj dir    Because of this   proj dir is what   path  should evaluate to   cat  gt   proj dir Makefile  lt  lt  EOF  path      patsubst        dir   abspath   lastword   MAKEFILE LIST      cwd       shell pwd   all       echo  MAKEFILE LIST    MAKEFILE LIST        echo           path    path        echo            cwd    cwd        echo    EOF    See debug each command set -x    Test using the Makefile in the current directory cd  proj dir make    Test passing a Makefile cd  temp dir make -f  proj dir Makefile    Cleanup rm -rf  temp dir   Output     cd  tmp makefile path test dir1 dir2 dir3   make MAKEFILE LIST   Makefile          path   private tmp makefile path test dir1 dir2 dir3           cwd   tmp makefile path test dir1 dir2 dir3    cd  tmp makefile path test   make -f  tmp makefile path test dir1 dir2 dir3 Makefile MAKEFILE LIST    tmp makefile path test dir1 dir2 dir3 Makefile          path   tmp makefile path test dir1 dir2 dir3           cwd   tmp makefile path test    rm -rf  tmp makefile path test   NOTE  The function   patsubst       path goes here    is used to strip the trailing slash

User · Answer

If you are using GNU make    CURDIR  is actually a built-in variable   It is the location where the Makefile resides the current working directory  which is probably where the Makefile is  but not always   OUTPUT PATH    project1 bin   notdir   CURDIR     See Appendix A Quick Reference in http   www gnu org software make manual make html

User · Answer

One line in the Makefile should be enough   DIR      notdir   CURDIR

User · Answer

THIS DIR      dir   abspath   firstword   MAKEFILE LIST

User · Answer

Solution found here   https   sourceforge net p ipt-netflow bugs-requests-patches 53   The solution is     CURDIR   You can use it like that    CUR DIR     CURDIR      Start   start      cd   CUR DIR  path to folder

User · Answer

As taken from here   ROOT DIR    shell dirname   realpath   firstword   MAKEFILE LIST       Shows up as     cd  home user     make -f test Makefile   home user test    cd test  make Makefile   home user test   Hope this helps

[makefile] How to get current relative directory of your Makefile?

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