[lazarus] CVS Updatesuy

[Michael.VanCanneyt at Wisa.be]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Mattias Gaertner wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003 18:57:47 +0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time)
> Michael Van Canneyt <michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be> wrote:
>
> >
> > > The lpi only uses absolute filenames if the file is not in the project
> > > directory. Can you give the full filenames?
> >
> > Delphi always uses filenames relative to the project directory.
> > SysUtils contains a function ExtractRelativePath() which does this for
> > you.
>
> This will will raise other problems.
> For example ExtractRelativepath('/home/bla/','/tmp/some.txt') results in
> '../../tmp/some.txt'. Moving the project to /home/ will not find the file
> any longer.
> The purpose of relative filenames is, that the project and all its files can
> be transferred easily to another location. Normally this means moving the
> project directory.

>
> The ExtractRelativepath will only help, if you spread your project over
> several directories:
>
> /home/projects/projectdir/project1.lpi
> /home/projects/otherdir/unit1.pas

I suppose that 99% of all projects will be one directory containing
the project file, and all other files in directories. Lazarus itself
is such a project.

So for 99% of all cases, using the relative path helps in keeping your
project moveable.

This is useful for instance if you have 2 branches in CVS. If you check out
the branches in different directories
/home/me/projects/myproject (+ subdirs)

Check out two copies, one for each branch:
/home/me/projects/myproject-main
/home/me/projects/myproject_fixes

If you keep relative paths, this will work. With absolute paths, you must
rename all files.

I think that keeping relative paths is a solution. If you use files totally
outside the project dir, then the IDE can simply store the absolute path.
But all subdirectories should be as relative paths. It is a small check to
do this, finally. If extractrelativepath starts with .., just use the
absolute path.  In all other cases, use the relative path.

Michael.