Building a package means converting the package source (from the repository) into a useable form. In YMake terms, when you build a package, YMake will construct all the package provisions. In other words, to gain access to a library or executable, you build the package that provides such. Of course building a package implies that all it's dependencies are themselves built.

Tearing down a package removes all built artifacts associated to the target package. From the user's perspective tearing down a package removes the availability of the provisions.

To be available for tear down, a package must not be required by any other package on the system. YMake also supports a cascading tear down directive which will remove packages that require the target (and recursively any packages requiring those packages).

The test action tests a package. Test a package implies building of that package. By default, testing a package implies testing all packages which provide provisions upon which the target package depends. The thinking is that you cannot fully trust the results of a test that may be running on a faulty foundation. This behavior can be overriden if necessary.

This action generates documentation for the target package. All package types support general documentation (in mbook format) and specific modules may generate other documentation as well (such as javadoc for the Java module).