wpkg --force-upgrade-any-version ...

Once in a while a project may jump to a new version that does not handle upgrades from a previous version. It can be very drastic, such as Apache version 1 to version 2. In that case, Apache did not offer a direct path to go from 1 to 2. Instead you had to manually transition. Many things were different and they did not see the point in attempting to automate the upgrade. When this drastic, the new package should have a new name (i.e. apache versus apache2.) However, if your project allows for upgrade of the previous version, you may still want to remove early on fixes to configuration files, settings, etc. when you jump to a higher version. When you do that, you are likely to prevent valid upgrades from such older versions to newer versions. This can be checked with the Minimum-Upgradable-Version field in a control file, then trying to upgrade too old a version generates an error. In some cases, however, you may end up without the necessary intermediate packages to be able to upgrade from the version you have to the most current version and the packager will prevent you from applying the upgrade!

The --force-upgrade-any-version option request the packager to upgrade the package anyway. In many cases this probably means some of the configuration files will now be incompatible. You will have to check with each specific project why such upgrades are or are not functional with the --force-upgrade-any-version.

IMPORTANT NOTE

The --no-force-all, --refuse-all, --no-force-upgrade-any-version, --refuse-upgrade-any-version all cancel this feature whatever the position of the different options on the command line.