[pacman-dev] Do we need the force option?

[Allan McRae]

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