diff -r 37a0ad669051 -r 7e3b145f8247 mercurial/commands.py
--- a/mercurial/commands.py	Tue Mar 21 21:26:52 2017 -0700
+++ b/mercurial/commands.py	Tue Mar 21 17:50:44 2017 -0700
@@ -4734,7 +4734,7 @@
     else:
         node1, node2 = scmutil.revpair(repo, revs)
 
-    if pats:
+    if pats or ui.configbool('commands', 'status.relative'):
         cwd = repo.getcwd()
     else:
         cwd = ''