When passing a relative path as the output for qmake then it will place the output in the path relative to the pro file rather than the current directory

When passing a relative path as the output for qmake then it will place the output in the path relative to the pro file rather than the current directory. To reproduce this go to qtbase/examples/widgets/mainwindows and do:

qmake -o application/Makefile application/application.pro

The Makefile(s) should be in the application directory as per the output but they end up being in application/application instead.