confusing behaviour using the root of the repo as source

[Leo Arias]

The new default for snapcraft will be to have the snapcraft.yaml in the snap directory.
That seems like a nice feature, and some people don't want to add the yaml to their root, so they will be happy for sure.

However, we have the common practice of using . as the source. Now, the meaning of . is confusing.

Lets say I have my snapcraft project in /home/elopio/project.

If I put the snapcraft.yaml in /home/elopio/project, source: . will mean /home/elopio/project as the source.

If I put the snapcraft.yaml in /home/elopio/project/snap, source: . will still mean /home/elopio/project. I find this slightly confusing.

And there's also a not-so-uncommon practice of putting the snapcraft.yaml in a subdirectory, and run snapcraft from that subdir.

If I put the snapcraft.yaml in /home/elopio/project/packaging, source: .. will mean /home/elopio/project.

If I put the snapcraft.yaml in /home/elopio/project/snap, source: .. will mean /home/elopio, which is wrong.

I'm not really sure what to do about this, or even if we have to do anything about this. I'm open this bug for discussion.

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Maybe, we could use a variable for cwd, the directory where snapcraft is called from.

That way we could have /home/elopio/project/snap/snapcraft.yaml with source: $SNAPCRAFT_ROOT
and /home/elopio/project/packaging/snap/snapcraft.yaml with source: $SNAPCRAFT_ROOT/..

However, I don't think $SNAPCRAFT_ROOT is the perfect name.