diff --git a/shared/paths.go b/shared/paths.go
index 1b9ff60..fca8b4c 100644
--- a/shared/paths.go
+++ b/shared/paths.go
@@ -30,6 +30,21 @@
 	BazelMetricsDir() string
 }
 
+// Joins the path strings in the argument list, taking absolute paths into
+// account. That is, if one of the strings is an absolute path, the ones before
+// are ignored.
+func JoinPath(base string, rest ...string) string {
+	result := base
+	for _, next := range rest {
+		if filepath.IsAbs(next) {
+			result = next
+		} else {
+			result = filepath.Join(result, next)
+		}
+	}
+	return result
+}
+
 // Given the out directory, returns the root of the temp directory (to be cleared at the start of each execution of Soong)
 func TempDirForOutDir(outDir string) (tempPath string) {
 	return filepath.Join(outDir, ".temp")