Shellcheck: source directive is relative to current working directory (CWD)

[hansbogert]

If I have file bar who references foo in the same directory. However if I run bar from somewhere else than its own directory, source fails, that's why I add a ENV variable. Below is a small example

# shellcheck source=foo.sh
. $SOME_ENV_DIR/foo.sh

I run $ shellcheck foo.sh bar.shand everything works fine. However if I run shellcheck from a different directory it fails, basically shellcheck does the same as bash i.e. the source=bar.sh directive is taken relative to CWD.

I expected this to work because due to transitivity in this example foo could be sourced by a 3rd file from a different directory and I'd like to be able to shellcheck from its directory as well.
The dir structure would then be:

 |- foo.sh                        
 |- bar.sh                   # source=foo.sh
 |- directory \
              |- 3rdfile.sh # source=../bar.sh

Is the "appropriate" way to assume some single root and make every reference relative to that? That would make it quite inflexible though.

[deryni]

I think this is mostly a duplicate of #500 and #510.

That said a bash script can (and probably should for cases like this) use something like this SO answer and/or Bash FAQ 028 instead of assuming $PWD or requiring a specific environment variable.

[sunshowers]

Hi -- I am indeed using $(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}") to refer to scripts in the same directory, but I don't see how I can express this with source. Would you consider adding a relsource or similar directive for this common pattern?

[hunterboerner]

Any update on this? It'd be much better than having to turn off the checker.

[docwhat]

Here is a suggestion for how to implement this:

• For paths that begin with /, the actual path is ${RootPath}/${SourceOverride} (don't know the Haskell syntax, sorry).
• For paths that begin with ./, the actual path is ${DirectoryOfScript}/${SourceOverride}
• For paths that begin with anything else, it behaves as-is.

The code can determine the RootPath by:

• A command line argument (e.g., --root=<RootPath> as suggested in #510

• By looking for a project root indicator such as .projectroot, .git, .hg, .svn, .bzr, _darcs, build.xml.

  I tried looking for a Haskell package to determine a project's root, but didn't find anything.

• As ultimate fallback, use the current directory.

[docwhat]

I tried to read the code in Parser.hs for the method getSourceOverride but I know pretty much zero Haskell.

Can anyone suggest something to get me started? I'm familiar with some functional concepts but am rusty on things like Monads, Maybes, etc.

[koalaman]

The action would most likely be in Parser.hs readSource where the filename is passed as-is in system $ siReadFile sys filename . The filename would need to be transformed based on a directory passed in the Environment (like shellTypeOverride).

[koalaman]

With 301705edea you can specify -P SCRIPTDIR to search relative to the script's directory, or -P /my/path to search relative to a path in the filesystem. Hopefully this helps!