Using absolute paths in the Forge pipeline ties the application to a particular location in one environment. It is therefore better to use relative paths.

In record-adapters, paths are relative to <app dir>/data/processing, which contains the content of <app dir>/data/incoming before the pipeline is run. Therefore any files from <app dir>/data/incoming can be referenced directly by name, without specifying a directory.

Java manipulator paths are relative to <app dir>. This applies both to the manipulator's class path and to any files the Java code may try to access. Since these file names are often given as pass-throughs, keep such pass-through values relative to <app dir>.