Off the top of my head, I can come up with 3 that feel precise.
(Terms like build and install are common, but overloaded with enough meaning that I wouldn’t call them precise? Even if we use them to mean something idiomatically precise, misinterpretations will abound.)
My list so far:
- instantiate: IIUC this means to evaluate a Nix expression that produces a derivation and write the serialized .drv out to the store.
- substitute: IIUC this means to download a realized artifact and place it in the store. (This is listed in the Glossary - Nix Reference Manual but the definition isn’t very approachable.)
- realise/realize: IIUC it means ~substitute-or-build, so it’s probably the “precise” alternative to “build” in many contexts. That said, the documentation (which is a little scant) mostly uses the noun form (realisation/realization), as in: nix-store - Nix Reference Manual
I’m not sure if the new Nix command/UX effort provides newer terms for these (I’m still mainly using the old commands).