[Nix-dev] Re: NixOS manual: "declared by" & "defined by"

[Ludovic Courtès]

Nicolas Pierron
<nicolas.b.pierron at gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 14:01, Ludovic Courtès <ludo at gnu.org> wrote:
>> Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl>
>> writes:
>>>>   * I’d prefer “used by” instead of “defined by”, and maybe even
>>>>     “defined by” instead of “declared by”.
>>>
>>> The "declare/define" terminology follows the C/C++ convention.
>>
>> I understand, but I don’t find it natural in this context.  In
>> particular, a single option can be used by several modules, and saying
>> that it’s “defined by” each of these modules makes it sound like there
>> are several possibly conflicting “definitions”.
>
> Which is the case, and that's the purpose of the merge function which
> is declare for merging definitions to provide a consistent result for
> uses.

Well, the merge functions actually /merge/, they don’t just bail out
when an option is “defined” more than once.  For instance,
‘environment.extraUsers’ is merged by appending the “definitions”;
there’s no conflict here.

Ludo’.