Bug 56535

Summary: Flag '--force' does not work as advertised
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Michal Jaegermann <michal>
Component: rpmAssignee: Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.2   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2001-11-20 18:21:41 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Michal Jaegermann 2001-11-20 18:21:35 UTC 
Description of Problem:

Typing 'rpm --help' one can see this:

--force[|=0x74]            short hand for --replacepkgs --replacefiles

This indeed used to be true.  Currently if one tries to "force"
a re-installation of an existing package (for whatever reasons - say
that some files got corrupted) this will be rejected.  Luckily
'--replacepkgs --replacefiles' still works (and which means that
the help text is misleading).

'--force' is actually a short hand for the two above plus '--oldpackage'
and the later check apparently become a bit too aggresive.
Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2001-12-02 11:23:07 UTC 
The fix for this -- if I'm permitted -- is gonna be to remove the --force
option entirely, there's more to package management than Applying The
Big Hammer.

Since I will never be permitted to remove --force, I choose to leave
bad enough alone.
Comment 2 Michal Jaegermann 2001-12-02 16:32:17 UTC 
I can understand that you are fed up with whines from folks which used
The Big Hammer to hit their thumbs but there are situations when uninstalling
and reinstalling packages, instead of using '--force', is not a feasible
option.  As the old principle goes "if you will ban stupid things you will
prevent smart things as well" and attempts to make things "idiot-proof"
either dismally fail or cripple them beyond usability.