gnu make and windows path

[Jim]

Hello,

I am porting a nmake (microsoft) make system to gnu make.

In the old make system the windows environment variable PATH is 
modified. It seems when i use GNU make it is not possible to update this 
variable in a way that executables called by make such is "gcc", "idl 
compiler", etc can see the modified variable.

Is there a way to do this in make? or do I have to instruct my users to 
set up there path properly before calling my gnu make build?

Cheers and thanks,
Jim