Been there, done that Maybe not for quite as long as you have, but it still had me head butting the table

What makes it event worse is that under QtCreator, the programs working directory at runtime is the "Debug" or "Release" folder, whilst when running under Visual Studio (my other dev environment) it isn't. If you go into the Debug or Release folder with your file manager and run the exe yourself, then that dir is your working dir, but if you run it from the IDE, then the project dir (the dir with all your sources is) is your programs working dir.

Grrr... Why does everyone do it differently!