just spent quite a bit of time debugging this, here's a minimal example:

```bash
# rm -rf a (if you want to reset)
cd /tmp
mkdir -p a/b
echo 'import os; os.chdir("..")' > a/b/c.py
cd a/b
python3 -m cProfile -o log.pstats c.py
ls -al
ls -al ..
```

example output:

```console
$ cd /tmp
$ mkdir -p a/b
$ echo 'import os; os.chdir("..")' > a/b/c.py
$ cd a/b
$ python3 -m cProfile -o log.pstats c.py
$ ls -al
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 asottile asottile 4096 May  3 20:35 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 asottile asottile 4096 May  3 20:35 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 asottile asottile   26 May  3 20:35 c.py
$ ls -al ..
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  3 asottile asottile 4096 May  3 20:35 .
drwxrwxrwt 28 root     root     4096 May  3 20:35 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 asottile asottile 4096 May  3 20:35 b
-rw-r--r--  1 asottile asottile  395 May  3 20:35 log.pstats
```

happy to work on a patch if this seems like a good idea to fix

I think it is worth to fix and it should be not difficult to fix. Either make the output file name absolute before executing the script, or open the output file before executing the script (what is easier). Unless I miss something.

@serhiy: this was pretty straightfowrard to fix as you suspected -- would you be able to review it?

I am not sure what is better: to fix it at high level, in main() for cProfile and cProfile, or at low level, in methods runctx() and run() of profile._Utils.

> I am not sure what is better: to fix it at high level, in main() for cProfile and cProfile, or at low level, in methods runctx() and run() of profile._Utils.

Maybe both, to keep them decoupled and be sure of correct behavior in all cases?

New changeset 3c0ac18504cfeed822439024339d5717f42bdd66 by Anthony Sottile in branch 'master':
bpo-40492: Fix --outfile with relative path when the program changes it working dir (GH-19910)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/3c0ac18504cfeed822439024339d5717f42bdd66

Many thanks for the report and the PR, Anthony!

Serhiy, do you think it is worth also calling abspath in the profile._Utils as you mentioned, for cases where those may be called directly?

New changeset 1c5a65723e623be32e246f58b8797a263f616295 by Anthony Sottile in branch '3.8':
bpo-40492: Fix --outfile with relative path when the program changes it working dir (GH-19910)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/1c5a65723e623be32e246f58b8797a263f616295

New changeset 7c949020ef2520d7a7cbc978f0b34423e6c2a94c by Anthony Sottile in branch '3.9':
bpo-40492: Fix --outfile with relative path when the program changes it working dir (GH-19910)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/7c949020ef2520d7a7cbc978f0b34423e6c2a94c