I did an -Syu on my Arch box today, which updated Mercurial, and the new package contains a /etc/mercurial/hgrc file. I had already created one on my system, and the old package did not contain one, so I got a file conflict. (54/54) checking package integrity [######################] 100% (54/54) checking for file conflicts [######################] 100% error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) mercurial: /etc/mercurial/hgrc exists in filesystem Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded. So instead, I had to -Sf the package, which installs the file with a pacnew: (1/1) checking package integrity [######################] 100% (1/1) checking available disk space [######################] 100% (1/1) upgrading mercurial [######################] 100% warning: /etc/mercurial/hgrc installed as /etc/mercurial/hgrc.pacnew This behavior is a bit...odd. We don't like people using -f, and they are trained to assume the worst, so most would not expect the backup logic to still kick into effect. A pactest is below, but I'm asking for thoughts on expected behavior in this case. Many possibilities listed for completeness, some of which are just plain dumb. 1) Keep as is with file conflict error, require -Sf, keep backing up file to pacnew 2) Keep as is with file conflict error, require -Sf, don't backup (this is stupid) 3) Don't error at all, treat as a normal backup case except pretend old file is the same as /dev/null (aka empty). 4) Same as (3), but make the pacnew warning message slightly different, e.g. "%s is new in package, installed as %s" or something. 5) Something like (3) or (4) but don't even treat it the same as an empty file, treat it as never matching anything. My vote is 3 or 4, not that we are a democracy. :) -Dan self.description = "Upgrade a package, with a file entering the pkg in 'backup'" lp = pmpkg("dummy") lp.files = ["usr/bin/dummy"] self.addpkg2db("local", lp) p = pmpkg("dummy", "1.0-2") p.files = ["usr/bin/dummy", "etc/dummy.conf"] p.backup = ["etc/dummy.conf"] self.addpkg(p) self.args = "-U %s" % p.filename() self.addrule("PACMAN_RETCODE=0") self.addrule("PKG_VERSION=dummy|1.0-2") self.addrule("!FILE_PACSAVE=etc/dummy.conf") self.addrule("FILE_PACNEW=etc/dummy.conf") self.addrule("FILE_EXIST=etc/dummy.conf")