Re: MANPATH not being cygpathed like PATH is?

[Jeremy Bopp <jeremy at bopp dot net>]

On 8/27/2010 1:28 PM, Tim Visher wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I recently switched from setting up environment variables within my
> bash_profile/bashrc file and instead started setting them on the box
> I'm on.  This works great for PATH.  In Windows I set the values to
> c:/whateverwhatever and then when my terminal fires up they get
> cygpathed (I'm assuming) into the right /usr/etcetcetc.
> Unfortunately, I'm observing no such behavior with the MANPATH.  I
> can't see any difference between it and the PATH value so I was
> wondering if this was something that cygwin does intentionally.

Cygwin only processes a handful of environment variables automatically
in the way you expect.  They include PATH, HOME, TMP, and TEMP if my
memory serves correctly.  Anything else you need to do for yourself.

The problem is that there is no general way to know what environment
variables should be processed, so an explicit list must be created and
maintained.  Apparently, a minimal set was chosen which is usually
sufficient to get you into a Cygwin environment at which point you can
selectively handle further processing as necessary.

For defining MANPATH within Windows, you could just specify it as Cygwin
wants it unless you have some non-Cygwin programs which also need to use
MANPATH.

-Jeremy

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