Branch for documentation changes.

1 files changed, 41 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/doc/user/ENV.sgml b/doc/user/ENV.sgml
index d3078f1..c2d7296 100644
--- a/doc/user/ENV.sgml
+++ b/doc/user/ENV.sgml
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 
 <!--
 
-  Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003 Steven Knight
+  __COPYRIGHT__
 
   Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
   a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
@@ -80,6 +80,46 @@
     env = Environment(ENV = {'PATH' : path})
   </programlisting>
 
+  <para>
+
+  Assign a dictionary to the &ENV;
+  construction variable in this way
+  completely resets the external environment
+  so that the only variable that will be
+  set when external commands are executed
+  will be the &PATH; value.
+  If you want to use the rest of
+  the values in &ENV; and only
+  set the value of &PATH;,
+  the most straightforward way is probably:
+
+  </para>
+
+  <programlisting>
+    env['ENV']['PATH'] = ['/usr/local/bin', '/bin', '/usr/bin']
+  </programlisting>
+
+  <para>
+
+  Note that &SCons; does allow you to define
+  the directories in the &PATH; in a string,
+  separated by the pathname-separator character
+  for your system (':' on POSIX systems, ';' on Windows):
+
+  </para>
+
+  <programlisting>
+    env['ENV']['PATH'] = '/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin'
+  </programlisting>
+
+  <para>
+
+  But doing so makes your &SConscript; file less portable,
+  (although in this case that may not be a huge concern
+  since the directories you list are likley system-specific, anyway).
+
+  </para>
+
   <!--
 
   <scons_example name="ex1">