On Friday 08 February 2008 18:14:33 Brad Bourn wrote:
On Friday 08 February 2008 9:55:56 am Anders Johansson wrote:
Um, no, No, NO! secondly, never ever ever ever ever EVER use --force [...] Maybe more of an explanation instead of 'Because I said so'?
It's been discussed here so many times before, but ok The main problem is that it hides error messages. An rpm can overwrite files from other rpms, which would normally cause rpm to stop without destroying anything, but with --force it will happily go ahead and ruin the system without a word (and you don't see those errors until you get past the dependency stage, so if you use --force to get past broken dependencies, you won't know what other errors lie ahead) It's also dangerous to recommend --force to beginners, because they will use it for everything with broken dependencies, which will sooner or later lead to a completely broken system that won't boot. I've seen it many times Also, if you ruin the dependency coherence, yast will always complain when you run it, so it's not a good idea to recommend to beginners either --force or --nodeps --nodeps has its uses, if used carefully. I primarily use it when I want to uninstall a package with a ton of dependencies when I know that I will immediately reinstall it or something else that provides the dependency resolution But --force is never needed. There are other parameters that provide the same functionality but which don't hide error messages. If for no other reason, that should lead to its removal: it's redundant and dangerous Anders -- Madness takes its toll -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org