Should `process.cwd()` be changed to the directory of the currently running test?

[sindresorhus]

Currently the cwd is the directory you execute ava in, but ava can be executed from any upper level in the project and will search down for test files, so the cwd is pretty arbitrary and useless. I want to make the cwd actually useful.

There are two options:

1. Change cwd to root of the project. (This is what gulp/grunt does)
2. Change cwd to the directory of the currently running test file. (This is what I personally prefer)

The reason I prefer the latter is that we run the test files hence IMHO the cwd is where we run it. It's like we would do: cd tests && node test.js.

Currently you have to do this to be able to load a read a test relative file:

var path = require('path');
var fs = require('fs');
fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'foo.json'));

If we changed process.cwd() to the currently running test directory we could instead just do:

var fs = require('fs');
fs.readFileSync('foo.json');

Thoughts? Anything I'm missing?

[mdibaiee]

I think it's a good idea but I'm not sure if it has any drawbacks as I lack experience in this kind of thing.

[Qix-]

It sounds good, but it might make migrating from Mocha a bit of a pain. New projects will benefit from it; ones coming from Mocha won't.

[sindresorhus]

@Qix- Why? It will make no difference if you've already hard-coded your paths with __dirname.

[Qix-]

True. Those that haven't should be anyway.

[vadimdemedes]

👍 Also tired of join(__dirname, 'fixtures', 'shit')

[kevva]

Yeah, I like option two too because that's really what is expected. Using the project root would confuse me.

[arthurvr]

Yeah, I like option two too because that's really what is expected. Using the project root would confuse me.

Me too. 👍

[stevemao]

I think this is more intuitive for people who haven't used mocha. But would this confuse people who just learned require(./) and fs.readFile(./) as the path are relative to different base?