Mac Executable Difficulty

[dangerawaits]

I have been working on a game using SDL2 and the Soloud audio library using VSCode with clang as my compiler for mac.

I have included the source code of the soloud library in my program rather than linking to a .dylib file which is how I linked for SDL2.

when I run the application from the terminal using ./main everything runs as expected.

however, when I try to run the game by double-clicking the executable, the program works but with no sound. This leads me to believe that I am not linking the source code of the soloud library correctly. please advise, my tasks.json file with my compiler args is as follows.

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "type": "shell",
            "label": "clang++ build active file",
            "command": "/usr/bin/clang++",
            "args": [
                "-std=c++17",
                "-DWITH_SDL2",
                "-stdlib=libc++",
                "-g",
                "${workspaceFolder}/*.cpp",
                "${workspaceFolder}/soloud/*.cpp",
                "${workspaceFolder}/soloud/*.c",
                "-o",
                "${fileDirname}/${fileBasenameNoExtension}",
                "-lSDL2",
                "-lSDL2main",
                "-lSDL2_image",
                "-lSDL2_ttf",
                "-I /usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.12/lib",
                "-I /usr/local/Cellar/sdl2_image/2.0.5/lib",
                "-I /usr/local/Cellar/sdl2_ttf/2.0.15/lib"
            ],
            "options": {
                "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
            },
            "problemMatcher": [
                "$gcc"
            ],
            "group": {
                "kind": "build",
                "isDefault": true
            }
        }
    ]
}

I have all the source code files for soloud in its own /soloud directory within my working directory.

[Ganado]

When your program starts, having it print its wording directory.
This would be system("pwd"); on *nix, and system("cd"); on Windows.

Is it different when launching it via ./main and launching it by double-clicking?

If some audio is not working, I assume that means it can't load an audio file correctly. I suggest some print statements to say whether or not file X is successfully loaded.

[dangerawaits]

ah interesting, yes when I run the program from terminal, system("pwd"); returns
"/Users/myname/CppProjects/Game"

but when double-clicked it returns
"/Users/myname"

so when it's double-clicked the working directory is wrong, how can I fix this? Ideally I want the working directory to be whatever directory the executable is in, is that possible?

[Ganado]

That I'm not sure of. Maybe someone else can answer.

But this StackExchange post might help you: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/179063/wrong-working-directory-if-bash-script-is-opened-via-double-click
That's Eclipse though, so it might not apply here.

[dangerawaits]

Thanks a lot for your help, I have managed to find a way to make this work.

using:

chdir( "/Users/myname/CppProjects/Game" );

before any media loading functions changes the working directory correctly. I'm not sure exactly how portable that function is but it at least works for osx.

I have actually implemented it like this

if (chdir("/Users/myname/CppProjects/Game") != 0)
{
    perror("ERROR - chdir() to /Users/myname/CppProjects/Game failed"); 
}

so that an error is returned if the function fails.

I'm not sure if it's possible to change it based on the executable's location but If I work out how to do this I will add it in another reply.