Change Directory Python Context Manager

I’ve had this snippet kicking around for a while. I found the basic function on StackOverflow… somewhere. I cleaned it up a tad, added type annotation, and present it here to the world.

This content manage allows changing of the current directory temporarily. This can be useful sometimes if a command needs to be run from a certain directory.

import os
from contextlib import contextmanager
from pathlib import Path
from typing import Generator, Union


@contextmanager
def set_directory(newdir: Union[Path, str]) -> Generator[Path, None, None]:
    """
    Changes the current directory to the given path, within the
    context manager.

    Args:
        newdir: The new path

    Yields:
        old (current) directory, just in case you need it
    """
    olddir = Path().absolute()

    try:
        os.chdir(newdir)
        yield olddir
    finally:
        os.chdir(olddir)

In use you’d do something like this:

with set_directory(Path("/buildroot/project")):
    run_build_or_do_something_cool()