make executes from the directory that contains the Makefile. This makes it
easy to call tools: just specify the tool's path relative to the Makefile.
file_b: file_a
./make_file_b.sh file_a
However, you cannot make a script with a nice command-line interface using
make - that's what Bash scripts are for. But, Bash scripts are executed from
your working directory, not the directory of the script. So, you can't use
relative paths, which can cause a lot of grief when calling scripts from within
scripts.
The long way
A way of being able to use relative paths when calling scripts, is by adding
cd -- "$(
realpath -- "$(
dirname -- "$(
realpath -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}"
)"
)"
)"
to the top of every bash script, but that's quite tedious.
The bashir way
Enter Bashir; install it and then change your shebangs from
#!/bin/bash
to
#!/usr/bin/bashir
and now when you execute your bashir scripts, e.g,
$ ./scripts/some_script.sh
they'll execute from the directory they're saved in.