Is there a reason why this method has never been blocked for upgrades? In other words, is there a reason to keep it for upgrades.
BTW I use upgrades in the strict sense: going from lower major versions to a higher major versions( 3.0 to 3.1, 3.0 to 3.2 and 3.1 to 3.2, and naturally no autoupdate for upgrades from 2.0).
Also, the filediff method fails with insufficient write permissions (not the filediff itself, but the file-editing), and with timeouts. Would it be possible to check the permissions, and the max_exec time (taking into account the server stats) and to warn the user when a system is too close to the lower requirements and thus wil probably fail.
edited
: changed from to for (I don't know why I typed that extra letter and changed the order, but now it makes more sense )