--project-dir with relative paths?

[max-sixty]

Describe the bug

--project-dir doesn't use relative paths, and I got confused given the error message

Steps To Reproduce

Run a project in a child path; say we have a DBT project in a path called sql under the current one:

$ dbt run --project-dir sql
Running with dbt=0.17.0
Encountered an error while reading the project:
  ERROR: Runtime Error
  no dbt_project.yml found at expected path sql/dbt_project.yml
Encountered an error:
Runtime Error
  Could not run dbt

$ dbt run --project-dir (pwd)/sql
Running with dbt=0.17.0
Found 4 models, 0 tests, 0 snapshots, 0 analyses, 147 macros, 0 operations, 0 seed files, 0 sources

I was doubting my sanity for a second with no dbt_project.yml found at expected path sql/dbt_project.yml

Expected behavior

Use relative paths, or if this is deliberate, don't accept relative paths

The output of dbt --version:

installed version: 0.17.0
   latest version: 0.17.0

Up to date!

Plugins:
  - bigquery: 0.17.0
  - snowflake: 0.17.0
  - redshift: 0.17.0
  - postgres: 0.17.0

The operating system you're using:
MacOS

The output of python --version:
Python 3.7.7

[drewbanin]

hey @max-sixty - this tripped me up too! See here: #2534 (comment)

Let's definitely make relative paths work for --project-dir at some point in the future. This is a pretty tricky part of the codebase - dbt does lots of magic to support running dbt run from a subdir of a dbt project (eg. models/), so it might be a little involved to get this working well. I do think it's worth doing though!

[beckjake]

Fixed in #2534