Re: RFC: Renaming "FreeBSD" repo in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf to "FreeBSD-ports"

On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 4:56 PM John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> But then this last name is wrong.  There are kernel modules in the base system
> as well, so that repository does not contain all of the project-provided kernel
> modules.
>
> > All right, maybe "FreeBSD packages" looks like a superset of the
> > latter two, so we can call it "FreeBSD main packages", which aligns
> > nicely with "FreeBSD quarterly packages".
>
> "main" vs "base" is not at all clear.  Which one contains the package for
> /bin/ls?  Is that in the "main" package set, or the "base" package set?
> Shouldn't the "main" package set contain the "main" parts of the system?
> (Or at least, isn't it conceivable that some users will think that and get
> inevitably confused?)
>
> I think using "ports" in the name is the best way to remove ambiguity.
> I would be fine, btw, with using "src" in the name for the base pkg
> repository.  I can understand why the logical project is called pkgbase
> instead of pkgsrc to avoid conflicting the other pkgsrc project, but these
> descriptions seem clear to me:
>
> - "FreeBSD src"
> - "FreeBSD ports"
> - "FreeBSD ports kernel modules"
>
> And they could be named "FreeBSD-src" and "FreeBSD-ports" without having any
> single repository named just "FreeBSD".  This better aligns with how we name
> the base system in other places (src.git, github/freebsd/freebsd-src.git, etc.)

I don't want to bikeshed this further, mainly because I feel that
discussions in mailing lists are too unstructured for this.

A structured approach would be:
1. Decide what entity has the last word. srcmgr? pkgmgr? Maybe core?
2. Formulate what's wrong with current naming
3. Propose new naming and show how it improves upon the previous one.
4. Discussion phase
5. A ruling entity makes a final decision

Luckily, I'm a low-ranking contributor enough to not have to decide on
such important things.