How best to include other scripts?

Question

The way you would normally include a script is with "source"

eg:

main.sh:

#!/bin/bash  source incl.sh  echo "The main script" 

incl.sh:

echo "The included script" 

The output of executing "./main.sh" is:

The included script The main script 

... Now, if you attempt to execute that shell script from another location, it can't find the include unless it's in your path.

What's a good way to ensure that your script can find the include script, especially if for instance, the script needs to be portable?

Answer 1

I tend to make my scripts all be relative to one another. That way I can use dirname:

#!/bin/sh  my_dir="$(dirname "$0")"  "$my_dir/other_script.sh"