On Archlinux it is not recommended to update only one package with the package manager pacman. Let’s say I have 11 packages, and one of them is extra/firefox (true story). Updating only a pacman -S firefox could introduce problems, but installing a new single package if it wasn’t there is okay.
So my question is, could we get around this by removing and installing the same package again in one go: pacman -Rs firefox && pacman -S firefox
Yeah, that kind of a condition would require the maintainer to patch the source of the non-updated program.
And that would be fine if there is just a little change, with an alternate function available but if the change requires changing the logic of the application, you are essentially expecting the package maintainer to do the software developer’s work.
The deprecation process is a good way to prevent this.