Re: Etymology of derivation

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Arun Isaac <arunisaac@systemreboot.net> skribis:

> The original Nix publication was helpful. On page 22 of the full thesis,
> it says:
>
> Derivation is Nix-speak for a component build action, which derives
> the component from its inputs.

Not sure if it helps, but I struggled a bit with the etymology of the
word as well and wrote this in the manual (info "(guix) Programming
Interface"):

     Lower-level APIs are available to interact with the daemon and the
  store.  To instruct the daemon to perform a build action, users actually
  provide it with a “derivation”.  A derivation is a low-level
  representation of the build actions to be taken, and the environment in
  which they should occur—derivations are to package definitions what
  assembly is to C programs.  The term “derivation” comes from the fact
  that build results _derive_ from them.

Ludo’.