Should I add this Repo?

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sun, 2008-10-26 at 20:08 -0700, Leonard Chatagnier wrote: 
> Brother reqauires you to use the --force option in order to install
> their printer drivers on Linux/Ubuntu. They have the best Linux/Ubuntu
> support

Somehow the first and the second part of your sentence don't fit
together. If they had "the best" linux support, their drivers would
simply be in the distro's repos

> So the option can't be all that bad when it is absolutely required to
> make my printer work on Hardy 64 bit. 

Strictly speaking it is meaningless to talk about "the --force option",
that's why I originally wrote "--force-things". dpkg has many
--force-<thing> options, some of them more dangerous and some of them
less so.

I have no idea about 32 vs 64 bit as I never ran a 64 bit system, so
far. But it still sounds like a badly-created package.

Just for reverence, here are the --force-<thing> options:

mario at chronic: ~ $ dpkg --force-help
dpkg forcing options - control behaviour when problems found:
  warn but continue:  --force-<thing>,<thing>,...
  stop with error:    --refuse-<thing>,<thing>,... |
--no-force-<thing>,...
 Forcing things:
  all [!]                Set all force options
  downgrade [*]          Replace a package with a lower version
  configure-any          Configure any package which may help this one
  hold                   Process incidental packages even when on hold
  bad-path               PATH is missing important programs, problems
likely
  not-root               Try to (de)install things even when not root
  overwrite              Overwrite a file from one package with another
  overwrite-diverted     Overwrite a diverted file with an undiverted
version
  bad-verify             Install a package even if it fails authenticity
check
  depends-version [!]    Turn dependency version problems into warnings
  depends [!]            Turn all dependency problems into warnings
  confnew [!]            Always use the new config files, don't prompt
  confold [!]            Always use the old config files, don't prompt
  confdef [!]            Use the default option for new config files if
one
                         is available, don't prompt. If no default can
be found,
                         you will be prompted unless one of the confold
or
                         confnew options is also given
  confmiss [!]           Always install missing config files
  breaks [!]             Install even if it would break another package
  conflicts [!]          Allow installation of conflicting packages
  architecture [!]       Process even packages with wrong architecture
  overwrite-dir [!]      Overwrite one package's directory with
another's file
  remove-reinstreq [!]   Remove packages which require installation
  remove-essential [!]   Remove an essential package

WARNING - use of options marked [!] can seriously damage your
installation.
Forcing options marked [*] are enabled by default.