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Runtime environment variables

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planodan:
Where are environment variables set for use when running a programs from within IDE?

I added them to Settings > Environment tab > Environment variables page > Created a group of env vars

I added group to Project > Properties > EnvVars option tab > Environment Variables page

When I run program within IDE, I do not get gui attributes, the settings for which come from config file set in environment variable.

When I run the program from outside IDE, invoking it from cmd line, it displays window attributes correctly.  Therefore, I assume the program is not reading the config file when run from inside the IDE.

oBFusCATed:
You can always print the env vars in your application to verify that the correct variables are set or not.

planodan:
Thanks for the reply, and yes you are correct.  I can also set them within the application, and I have tried that as well to no avail, all of which really should not be necessary, IMO.  I'm not being critical of CB, I just couldn't imagine that it did not provide for a way to specify runtime requirements, the starting point of which would be the runtime or object path. Therefore, the problem was not CB, but a matter of me not having learned where it was set or how it worked.  I assumed the "Objects output dir" in Projects > Properties > Build Targets was that setting, and if so, my assumption was either wrong, or because of a bug, it wasn't working.

My application is built to automatically look in the current directory ("Objects output dir"?) for the config file, then, if present, a path specified in a certain environment variable, read in and loaded on startup.  The environment variables control various system and other behaviors, some of which are customizable by the user.  That scheme works perfectly, and has for a long time, that is why the app or programs work correctly when run from a cmd prompt in the "Objects output dir".  The only exception is when I run programs from within CB.  I have been using CB for several years, and that particular feature has never worked, which means I can do a quick test of a program within CB, but I have to go outside of CB to see the program and app run as it should, i.e. with full attributes.  I decided to see if I could find and fix that problem, thus the reason for my question.

When a program is run from within CB, it behaves very similar to a program that runs on Unix/Linux in a forked shell where the environment variables have not been exported and therefore are not passed to the forked shell in which the program is running.  Since Windows does not function in that manner, I have to assume there is something in the way CB invokes a program that causes it to ignore the environment variables.

Sorry for the trouble, and apparently this isn't a problem for anyone else, so I will just live with CB the way it is, no big deal.

BlueHazzard:
I can not follow. Can you explain your problem a bit more?
You have environment variables like PATH to set some configuration options?
Then you load things from a config file? And from within codeblocks it never works?
But if you copy things into the object output folder it seems to work?

Lets make things clear: The object folder is nothing where you should work in. This is only a place for object files that the compiler creates and not for user things...
If you application can not find the config file if you run it in codeblocks it is probably because the cwd (current working directory) of your application is wrong. If you run a program within codeblocks the cwd is set by codeblocks to the folder where the project file is. So if you use relative paths within your application the base folder is the project folder. You can set the cwd of your application when started trough codeblocks in project->Properties->Build targets->Execution working directory

About environment variables problems a minimal example project would be nice to test...

edit: Also what codeblocks version and what operating system are you using?

sodev:

--- Quote from: planodan on March 20, 2019, 05:48:41 pm ---my assumption was either wrong

--- End quote ---

Thats the reason :). The Objects output dir has nothing to do with runtime environment, this is the (base) directory where the .obj files that the compiler creates will be put, nothing else. However exactly above that setting, the Execution working dir, is what you need. This directory will be set as (starting) working directory of your application.

It's not a great design decision to depend on the current working directory to find files your application depends on, this forces the user to be in that directory at application startup, so this would fail if e.g. your application is in the system path and gets started from a random directory.

The Environment variables setting of CodeBlocks is working as intended for me.

Looks like BlueHazzard was faster, oh well, but you don't delete stuff on the internet ;D

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