Re: Forcing reinstall in package.el

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:17:51 -0700 Tom Tromey <address@hidden> wrote: 

>>>>>> "Stefan" == Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:
Tom> I think the current behavior is better.
Tom> Usually installing something that has the same or lesser version is a
Tom> user error.  Only a subset of users will actually want to
Tom> force-overwrite a package.

Stefan> I mostly agree, but also agree that reinstalling is an important case.
Stefan> Is there any reason prompting the user is not a good solution?

Tom> As long as the prompt is clear that this is probably not what you meant,
Tom> I guess it is ok.

How about handling the two cases (same and older version) separately:

"Do you really want to install the same version of %s again? (y/n/Y/N) "

"You have %s version %s installed, are you sure you want the older version %s? 
(y/n/Y/N) "

...and the user can turn those prompts off with package-expert-noprompts
or something like that.

Ted