Mike Gerdts wrote: > I worry that after the first --force you are forever stuck with > --force for nearly all subsequent package operations. As such fingers > and/or aliases are likely to be trained to always use the --force > option. When was the last time you did "rm -r" instead of "rm -rf"?
...and this is the primary reason that I'm against "--force"-like command options. They are abitrary and unconstrained. > There are various types of dependencies[1]. Perhaps the thing that > should be be forceable is to change the type of an existing dependency > from require to optional. The equivalent of "pkg ... --force" (but > probably named --weaken-depends instead of --force) either list or > change the dependencies. In doing so it would maintain a list of > weakened dependencies so they can be queried or fixed in the future. > Such information would probably be in the top three pieces of data > gathered during a support call. Something like this is a great deal more likely to be doable since it fits within existing dependency mechanisms, and with some planning and work, might actually be doable without compromising the integrity of the system or the manageability of the packages. Thanks, -- Shawn Walker
