brew reinstall is exiting with "Warning: already installed"

[mistydemeo]

==> Reinstalling lynx -vd
Warning: lynx-2.8.7 already installed

[MikeMcQuaid]

Hmm. Can't reproduce with ack. It from a tap?

[mistydemeo]

I can't reproduce either after manually reinstalling. That's weird.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Weird.

[mistydemeo]

Ah - it was a very old install. This happens if the thing to reinstall is missing an opt prefix. I can reproduce by rming the opt prefix then trying brew reinstall.

[jacknagel]

What should we do here? Would like to address it or close.

[janson]

FWIW: I've experienced this since upgrading from 10.8.x to 10.9.2.

• All my links were broken for installed packages.
• Until I unlink && link a given package I get the error @mistydemeo described.

$ brew reinstall node
==> Reinstalling node
Warning: node-0.10.26 already installed
$ which node
$ brew unlink node
Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.10.26... 1296 links removed
$ brew link node
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.10.26... 1192 symlinks created
$ which node
/usr/local/bin/node
$ brew reinstall node
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.10.26: 1121 files, 16M, built in 2.5 minutes

So far, I've seen this with every installed package.

[qwertmax]

Cool that works for me, thanks!

[adamv]

Homebrew installs don't survive across major OS X updates.

[adamv]

Tentatively closing this.