macOS: the current working directory is /, rather than the user's home directory

[dyaandys]

Start APL/RIDE on macOS
)SH pwd
/

IDE:
Version: 4.0.2679
Platform: MacIntel
Date: 2017-03-01 19:10:37 +0000
Git commit: c359f66
Preferences:{

}

Interpreter:
Version: 16.0.29355
Platform: Mac-64
Edition: Unicode/64
Date: Mar 2 2017 at 02:32:24

[jayfoad]

Jay's diagnosis:

1. On the Mac, when you click on an application like RIDE, the system seems to start it with / as the current working directory (cwd).
2. When RIDE spawns an interpreter, the new process inherits the cwd of its parent.

Possible solutions:

1. Get RIDE to change its own cwd to $HOME as it starts up.
2. Get RIDE to set the cwd of any interpreter it spawns to $HOME.

But neither of these feel quite right to me, because if I start RIDE from the command line (e.g. on Linux) and spawn an interpreter, I might reasonably expect that the spawned interpreter is running in the same directory that I started RIDE from.

So, I propose to add a new "working directory" option when you spawn an interpreter. The field will be prefilled with the value of $HOME, but you can set it to anything you like, including "" (empty) to inherit RIDE's own cwd.

[JasonRivers]

This sounds like a good solution.

In the UI, Please could you expand $HOME, though. As a user - I might have no idea what $HOME means, but I know exactly what /Users/Jason (macOS) or /home/jason (Linux) is.

[jayfoad]

There's still a problem: when you start RIDE with RIDE_SPAWN=dyalog, you don't get a chance to set the working directory, so it still defaults to / on the Mac.

[jayfoad]

The intent of those commits is:

1. For developers, if you run RIDE from the command line, and RIDE spawns an interpreter, the interpreter will be running in whatever your current directory was in the first place.

2. If you run an installed RIDE it'll be running in your home directory (at least on the Mac; not sure about other platforms yet) so any spawned interpreter will also run in your home directory.

3. In both cases you can override the working directory of the interpreter by filling in a field on the connect page, giving an absolute or relative path. The field defaults to '' (empty string) which just means wherever RIDE is running.