Terminology

keys, values and tasks

A value is a bundle, an asset, a form, an object or an script. A value is immutable (it should not change). The Values section has more detail.

A key is an identifier in the format MODULE@VERSION used to:

• locate an up-to-date value from a Value Store
• if there is no up-to-date value, locate a recipe (called a "task") from a Task Model that can produce that value

The simple make build system has the following:

• key: a filename
• value: the contents of a file
• task: a Makefile recipe

The build system in this specification is a generalization of those keys.

strictly relative path

• Not an absolute path
• After the path is normalized, there are no path segments that start with .. will raise an error.
• After the path is normalized, there are no path segments that contain a forward or backward slash. For example, even though Unix filenames can contain backslashes, but they cannot be strictly relative paths.