So... I was looking through the bug tracker and I noticed this: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/30179#comment105772 Essentially, directory on filesystem being replaced by a file. pacman ignores the conflict and then sees it is trying to replace a directory with a file and aborts. The choices are: 1) we modify force to delete the directory before installing the file - this can screw over the local db if the directory is owned. 2) we look at the conflicts and stop the transaction in non-file-to-file conflicts even with --force I think #2 is the better option here. OR... 3) get rid of --force altogether! I have good feelings about #3. When do we actually NEED --force? In most cases a simple rm will fix the conflict and it forces (pun!) the user to think about what is being done. There is only one case I can think of where that is not appropriate - when a user is trying to recover from deleting their local pacman database. But then they can use --dbonly to get the initial fix done, and will need to -Qk and rm etc as necessary... Would anyone object to removing the option completely? Allan