pkg-remove(8) - why?

[Erichans]

What's the story/history of pkg-remove(8) ?

It is not documented in the man pages, other than
- man pkg-remove seems to be 'redirected' to pkg-delete(8)

pkg remove seems to function like pkg delete but as such it is not mentioned at all in the man page pkg-delete(8)

Using pkg remove wrongly suggests there is only pkg delete

[1-0] # pkg remove -BLA
pkg: illegal option -- B
Usage: pkg delete [-DfnqRy] [-Cgix] <pkg-name> ...
       pkg delete [-Dnqy] -a

For more information see 'pkg help delete'.
[2->1<] #

It is not a pkg alias:

[1-0] # pkg alias | grep remove
[2->1<] #

It is explicitly mentioned as a command:

 # pkg help | egrep '(delete|remove)'
        annotate       Add, modify or delete tag-value style annotations on packages
        autoremove     Removes orphan packages
        delete         Deletes packages from the database and the system
        remove         Deletes packages from the database and the system

 

[mer]

I'm guessing here, but on different platforms (linux distros, redhat/debian) some of the package tools use "delete" to deinstall a package, some use "remove".

As for FreeBSD, I'm guessing "remove" is an alias that does "delete". Why is it there? Someone couldn't get consensus?