From the FAQ, I understand that all NMS operations will have the benefits of forge mappings. I’m wondering what kind of support the community will provide for NMS (or whatever it ends up being called). Will Sponge use the version package naming (net.minecraft.server.v1_7_R4) like Bukkit? Will NMS discussion be allowed on the forums?
As far I understood Sponge will give you an instance of NMS objects. Don’t understand we wrong. Bukkit never gave you NMS objects, it gives you wrapped objects that invoke the server. This will normally reduce the need of NMS.
No, Sponge will use Forge and Forge uses the normal minecraft mapping. To get an idea how it looks unzip a vanilla minecraft server.
No. Sponge will not do that because that will break the api with every version.
Forge uses MCP for the mappings. While developing you will be working with the mapped names. Those mappings are then converted back to MC names during the build.