Feature with id already exists

You’ve probably already seen this error when you’re trying to deploy from Visual Studio 2012.
Error occurred in deployment step ‘Add Solution”: A feature with ID 15/{GUID} has already been installed in this farm. Use the force attribute to explicitly re-install the feature.

If you are like me with a package with almost 25 features, you don’t want to do this.
The following worked though.

1. Open SharePoint 2013 Management Shell
2. Add-SPSolution [location of your solution]
3. Install-SPSolution -Identity [yoursolution].wsp -GACDeployment –Force
4. Check the farm solutions in your Central Admin. The package should have been deployed without errors.

If you try to deploy now from Visual Studio it will work.
It seems that the Farm remembers that this package has to be installed with force.

Personally I find this a better solution than adding the attribute in the feature xml.