Hi, Core people!
Of course, corruption of the local data occurs not frequent, but it is possible. tce-load treats such circumstances as missing extension - see "app_exists" function, and consequently calls "fetch_app" function. But "fetch_app" is not attended to treat corrupted data, this trouble must be cured by tce-update.
I think that it would be better, if "app_exists" in case of inconsistency of .tcz and .tcz.md5.txt will warn about necessity of tce-update calling and terminate.
Actual behaviour of tce-load -w may even worsen the situation of data been corrupted, because if file (.tcz or .tcz.md5.txt) became shorter it will append correct data to it to achieve required file lehgth (wget -c). In case corrupted files' sizes are equal or bigger than must be, You will see
"server returned error 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable"
which tells nothing about tce-update needed.
Apps in such situation fails too, probably they are calling tce-load. If yes, adjustment of "app_exists" function in tce-load will eliminate the misleading too.
Regards!