Should environment variables in Delphi .dproj search paths be used for repeatable builds given IDE auto‑modifications?

Goal: achieve repeatable Delphi builds across different developer machines by leveraging the .dproj file’s search‑path settings.

Constraint: the IDE may automatically rewrite the .dproj when compiler options change, potentially converting environment‑variable references into absolute paths or adding duplicate entries, which breaks reproducibility and causes merge conflicts in version control.

Does storing environment variables in search paths prevent the IDE from overwriting them with absolute values? Can a combination of relative paths and environment variables provide a stable baseline that survives IDE edits? Which approach minimizes version‑control conflicts while still allowing the command‑line compiler to resolve paths correctly?