How to adjust the path that Emacs' compile-goto-error gets from the compilation buffer?

Question

I am using Emacs 23 and have the following problem: I run our project's build system from within Emacs like M-x compile -> cd /foo/bar && ./build The build system now does some magic, "cd"s into some subdirectory for the build process and then gcc throws an error: ../src/somesource.cc:50 error: blablabla Now the problem is that Emacs won't find that path, because it assumes the compile process started out in /foo/bar, and not in /foo/bar/builddir. So the leading "../" is not working for Emacs, e.g. when running compile-goto-error. Is there a way to tell Emacs to try skipping leading "../"?

Accepted Answer

The best solution might be to change the build system to emit messages when it changes directories. Emacs looks for

```
Entering directory `...'
... 
Leaving directory `...'
```

(See the `compilation-directory-matcher` variable. If your build system does emit messages when it changes directories, but they're not in the format Emacs is looking for, you can add new regexps to `compilation-directory-matcher`.)

The other solution is to change `compilation-search-path` (which is a list of directories).

How to adjust the path that Emacs' compile-goto-error gets from the compilation buffer?

Solution

Problem