Why cant I use the $SVN_EDITOR environment variable in cygwin?

Question

I must be missing something stupid! It works fine when I use the -m option.

$ echo $SVN_EDITOR
emacs

$ svn commit test.py
svn: Commit failed (details to follow):
svn: Could not use external editor to fetch log message; consider setting the $SVN_EDITOR envirionment variable or using the --message (-m) or --file (-F) options 
svn: None of the environment variables SVN_EDITOR, VISUAL or EDITOR are set, and no 'editor-cmd' run-time configuration option was found

Answer 1

Though this is a cygwin question, I would like to state that on windows command line when using svn command line (collabnet), you could use the following

set SVN_EDITOR=notepad.exe

I am stating this hear since it might help windows users and did not find anything else related to this on other SO questions.

Answer 2

I have never seen a platform where SVN_EDITOR actually works -- it doesn't work on Mac OS X either. Use EDITOR, it should work fine.