data_desk VS whereami

There are various ways you can do metaprogramming in C. Ryan Fleury's Data Desk is one example of how you can do inspection and introspection: https://github.com/ryanfleury/data_desk. Writing a C program that acts as a pre-compiler for your other C code is another example; you can make your own system for generics that way for example.

If the file is part of a software suite to be distributed, e.g. a texture file, a database or similar then you can specify the path relative to the final location of the executable in the installed directory structure. To get the path of the executable you need to use OS specific functions or a cross platform library like whereami.

Also paths are typically relative to the Current Working Directory, which is not necessarily the same directory as where the .exe file is. If you want to give a path relative to the .exe file you first need to find the absolute path of the .exe file. There is no way to get this in standard C++, but you can use the Windows API to find it or use a cross-platform library like whereami.

Someone made a cross-platform library to get the path to the executable: https://github.com/gpakosz/whereami

C++ only knows about the Current Working Directory and all file paths will be relative to that and not relative to the executable file (by the time your main() function is called the entire program has been loaded into memory). You need to use the OS API to get the location of the executable file. Luckily there are easy to use cross platform libraries for this such as whereami. Then you can specify the assets path relative to the executable file and it will work no matter where the program is run from as long as the directory structure is as you specify.

Find the path of the executable and save the file relative to this. This is beyond standard C++ and you have to use the API of the Operating System. There is luckily some people that made cross platform libraries for this, such as whereami.

Set up CLion so that it copies the input files to a folder relative to the executable file. However relative file paths in C++ are always relative to the current working directory, which is not necessarily the same directory as where the executable is. You have to use OS specific functions to get the path of the executable or use a wrapper library like whereami.

If you need the path relative to the .exe you first need to find the absolute path of the .exe, for which standard C++ has no way - you need to use OS specific features (Win API) or a wrapper library, e.g. whereami

You need to get the path to the executable. Unfortunately there is no standard way in the C++ language to do this, so you will have to use the OS API or a library such as https://github.com/gpakosz/whereami or one of the many similar ones.

it will look for that path relative to the current working directory, which depends on how you run your executable. You will likely install the resource files in a directory relative to where the executable file is installed. There is however, no standard C++ way of getting the path of the executable, so you have to use a library such as whereami.

For a moment I was really confused, because https://github.com/gpakosz/whereami