[CentOS] Down-grading to an "obsoleted" package

Hi,

Does anyone know if there is a clean way to "downgrade" to the old rpm 
package when it was previously replaced by another that obsolete it?

I mean, say that I have installed some rpm "A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm", and 
along comes "B-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm", whose spec has

Obsoletes: A

Now, if I do "rpm -U B-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm" or "yum install 
B-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm" or (if B is available through an enabled repository) 
"yum update", what happens is that "A" gets removed and "B" is installed 
in its place. Then I decide I want to switch back to "A". So what do I 
do? I know that one answer is

rpm -e B
rpm -U A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

- but what if A and B provide facilities required by other installed 
packages? I'll then have to pass "--nodeps" when removing B, but that's 
something that I really want to avoid as it means loosing control over 
whether all dependencies are satisfied. So is there an alternative?

"rpm -U A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm" alone seems to fail with file conflicts, 
assuming "B" replaces some of "A"'s files. In a real scenario I tried, 
there was no mention of the fact that something that was essentially a 
newer version of the same package, was already installed.

"yum upgrade A" (when the package is available on a repository) fails in 
a similar manner.

"yum localinstall A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm" is a bit smarter - it exists with 
a message like "Cannot install package A. It is obsoleted by installed 
package B".

"yum downgrade A" (via repository) says something like "No Match for 
available package: A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm".

"yum localdowngrade A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm" would seem to have the highest 
probability of success based on the above, except that there is no such 
command :-/

Any other ideas?

- Toralf


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