Changing the Working Directory

You can change the working directory using the Change Directory panel or by entering a command in the Commands text box in the main window. Changing the working directory changes the path used when you click the button for the working directory in file selectors, and (in most cases) changes the default directory when file selectors are opened. It also changes the directory used to write job files (the job launch directory). You can also set a preference to specify the default working directory, which also sets the working directory to the chosen default.

Maestro can now automatically update the working directory when you open a project, from the Welcome Panel. To enable this, check the Project Directory option under Preferences → Directories. In the case of, standard projects the working directory switches to the project's folder. The working directory switches to the parent directory for Zipped Projects (.prjzip) (instead of a temporary extraction folder). If the project directory cannot be found, a warning message will be displayed.

To open this panel, do one of the following:

• In the Maestro main window, choose File → Change Working Directory
• In the Project Table panel, choose File → Change Working Directory

This panel is like a standard file selector panel, but the Files of type option menu is grayed out, so that you can only select a directory.

Maestro checks folder permissions when you change these settings. If a folder cannot be updated, a warning appears:

Read-only: A warning appears, but the folder updates.

Does not exist / No access: A warning appears, the update is blocked, and Maestro switches back to your last valid setting.

The text fields for manually entering custom directory paths ("Other" lines) only display your last valid, user-defined path or remain empty.If you type or browse to a broken or restricted path, the box will automatically clear and go back to your last valid entry.

You can also change the working directory by entering the changedirectory command in the Commands text box . This command is aliased by default to chdir or cd in Maestro.

The syntax of the command is as follows:

changedirectory directory

where directory can be a relative path (like file1.mae or ../file1.mae) or an absolute path (like /home/yunohu/file1.mae). The shortcuts ~ and ~user can be used. They are expanded out automatically. Other special shell characters are NOT expanded.

Environment variables can also be used in a limited fashion. Environment variables must appear at the beginning of a directory entry. For example, $MYSPECIALDIR/mmodstuff is valid but /home/$PLATFORM/mmodstuff is not, since the environment variable does not appear at the beginning of the directory name.

Environment variables must be defined in the shell from which Maestro is started. For example, if MYSPECIALDIR is defined in the shell used to start Maestro, then it can be used as described above. If it does not exist, a warning dialog is displayed.