Using Environment Variables All the main Operating System platforms (Windows, OSX and Linux) support environment variables in much the same way. A lot of the SIA runtime environment can be defined using environment variables. This saves having to pass a number of options and setting on the command line each time SIA is run. For example the root folder of the current repository can be set using the SIAArchivefolder environment variable which will save a lot of time and the possibility of passing the incorrect path on the command line. One such environment variable however needs to be defined unless the SIA installation is in the standard place for the platform. See Standard OS platform installation locations. SIA Home environment variable SIA is located on the users machine in a location defined at installation time. The installation is laid out in a defined set of folders each with a defined proposes. This allows functions with in the installation to be found by SIA. In order to locate the application installation on a given machine a home environment variable is defined. This is called SIA_HOME this will contain the path to the root installation folder. From this the main configuration file can be found in the configuration folder. Many of the options used on a frequent basis can be defaulted using an environment variable or placed in the main configuration file. See environment variables and configuration file