Many users would like to use environment variables in Jamfiles, for example, to control the location of external libraries. In many cases it is better to declare those external libraries in the site-config.jam file, as documented in the recipes section. However, if the users already have the environment variables set up, it may not be convenient for them to set up their site-config.jam files as well and using the environment variables might be reasonable.

Boost.Jam automatically imports all environment variables into its built-in .ENVIRON module so user can read them from there directly or by using the helper os.environ rule. For example:

import os ;
local unga-unga = [ os.environ UNGA_UNGA ] ;
ECHO $(unga-unga) ;

or a bit more realistic:

import os ;
local SOME_LIBRARY_PATH = [ os.environ SOME_LIBRARY_PATH ] ;
exe a : a.cpp : <include>$(SOME_LIBRARY_PATH) ;