title: Why does MinGW/MSys change the binary path?
body: <p>I'm using Mingw to build a C/C++ project. This project has makefiles beyond my comprehension, and relies on a custom and quite sophisticated toolchain to compile it. It's quite convenient to have GNU tools available on Windows, especially from Windows's cmd shell, but while invoking the tools (make in particular), MinGW seems to change my PATH around.</p>
  
  <p>Cmd does it normally:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo %PATH% &gt; ... c:\Apps\msys\bin ... (from cmd)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but msys changes this address to :</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $PATH &gt; ... /usr/bin ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>in msys, even when I print the PATH from a makefile. As a result, make complains that it can't find commands like make, uname, echo, you name it (no pun intended).</p>
  
  <p>Strangely, I managed to get this environment working ages ago without a hitch, but this is the first time I remember seeing this path problem. How can I get MinGW/msys to correctly point to its executables?</p>