Pacman: strange handling of newer packages when updating

Question

I've upgradedto Xorg 7.1 packages from the testing/ repository and now when I run pacman -Syu... well it correctly reports:
:: libgl-dri: local (6.5rc1-1) appears to be newer than repo (current/6.4.2-2)
:: mesa: local (6.5.1rc1-1) appears to be newer than repo (current/6.4.2-1)
:: xf86-input-keyboard: local (1.1.0-1) appears to be newer than repo (current/1.0.1.3-1)
:: xf86-input-mouse: local (1.1.1-1) appears to be newer than repo (current/1.0.4-1)
:: xf86-video-ati: local (6.6.2-1) appears to be newer than repo (current/6.5.8.0-1)
:: xorg-server: local (1.1.1-1) appears to be newer than repo (current/1.0.2-3)
:: Above packages will be skipped.  To manually upgrade use 'pacman -S <pkg>'
And that's fine, BUT... I also have installed fixesproto-4.0-2 from testing/ and pacman -Syu tries to downgrade it to 3.0.2-2 from current/.
Is it a bug in pacman that thinks 3.0.2-2 > 4.0-2 ?
(I tried renaming fixesproto-4.0-2 to fixesproto-4.0.0-2 in /var/lib/pacman/local , and edited the version in desc, but that didn't help -  although pacman -Q shows the new version)
Pacman is v2.9.8

Answer 1

Thanks phrakture, that explains it, it's good to know it's not a bug in pacman. BTW why is that force=y needed?
chrismortimore, there's nothing special in my pacman.conf - except that testing is put last.
It is only an issue because you are using partial testing packages, which is not recommended.
well, I can only test some packages at a time, not the whole bunch... I still need the computer for work..
I only upgraded Xorg-server because: I knew I can get away with only several packages from testing/ and wanted to know if there are improvements in the mach64 driver, since sometimes when moving the mouse I see like a ghost flicker of the cursor. That iritates... alas 7.1 didn't help, EXA doesn't add much and EXA + RenderAccel hangs the X server.