When installing an development elastic-agent, using --develop, if it's done to override an existing development agent, using --force, the development agent will uninstall the production agent.

It seems the --force ignores the --develop and runs the uninstall command against the production agent. It creates two problems:

• the develop agent uninstalls the production agent
• if the uninstall succeeds, the install fails as the development agent hasn't been removed.

For confirmed bugs, please report:

• Version: 8.15.0, main
• Operating System: linux, mac, needs test on Windows, but it should be affected as well
• Discuss Forum URL: N/A
• Steps to Reproduce:
  • install an production agent
  • install a development agent
  • try to override the development agent: sudo elastic-agent install -nf [...]
  • it'll uninstall the production agent and fail:

root@elastic-agent:~# ./elastic-agent-8.15.0-linux-x86_64/elastic-agent install -fn --develop --url=https://fleet.elastic-cloud.com:443 --enrollment-token=a-token==
Installing into development namespace; this is an experimental and currently unsupported feature.
Installing in non-interactive mode.
[    ] Done  [39s]                                    
Elastic Agent has been uninstalled. ## <---- the production agent was uninstalled
[ ===] Error copying files  [39s] Error uninstalling. Printing logs
Error: error installing package: failed to copy source directory (data/elastic-agent-25075f) to destination (data/elastic-agent-8.15.0-25075f): open /opt/Elastic/Agent-Development/data/elastic-agent-8.15.0-25075f/components/agentbeat: text file busy # <---- the develop agent hasn't been removed