apt-get throwing warning: "W: --force-yes is deprecated, use one of the options starting with --allow instead"

Question

I'm running on Ubuntu 20.04 on Circle CI "machine" executor. Today I see that:

sudo apt-get install -y pkg1 pkg2

is throwing this warning:

W: --force-yes is deprecated, use one of the options starting with --allow instead

I'm not using "--force-yes". Where is this coming from? Even

sudo apt-get update

throws the same warning.

Answer 1

Today I see that:

sudo apt-get install -y pkg1 pkg2

is throwing this warning:

W: --force-yes is deprecated, use one of the options starting with --allow instead

One can supply arguments to apt-get in at least three ways:

• using its specific CLI arguments, e.g. apt-get --force-yes;
• using -o CLI arguments with Configuration Item, e.g. apt-get -o "APT::Get::force-yes=true"; or
• using its configuration files, e.g.:

  APT {
      Get {
          force-yes "true";
      };
  };
  

  in /etc/apt/apt.conf.

If you don't see set arguments specified in your apt-get calls, you probably want to check /etc/apt/apt.conf, /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*, or any other sources of apt-get configuration files.

Note that --force-yes is dangerous and you may want to remove this options from your apt-get configuration files.

Answer 2

The first answer is right, but I could not understand from that what should be written instead of --force-yes. In my code, it was:

--allow-change-held-packages 

This is taken from a comment below much of the same question at Ubuntu 18 command apt-get dist-upgrade -qq --force-yes deprecated - Super User.

This is tested, the warning "W: --force-yes is deprecated, use one of the options starting with --allow instead" vanished. If this does not help, check the link for other --allow-... strings.