[wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins

[Duane Storey]

The current WordPress implementation of the auto plugin updater does the
following:

1) Downloads a zip file of the new plugin
2) Unzips it into a new directory
3) Deletes the old directoy
4) Copies the new directory to the old directory
5) Deletes the new directory

A side effect of this is that all user-generated content that's part of the
plugin gets deleted (for example, you can add custom styles to CFORMS, or
custom icons to WPtouch).  Anyone know the motivation behind doing it this
way?  The auto upgrade for WordPress obviously works differently since your
themes and plugins aren't deleted during an auto upgrade.   I'd be happy to
submit a patch to simply unzip into the current plugin directory (which
would maintain user generated content in that plugin folder), but I was just
curious about the motivation for doing it the current way.

Thanks,
Duane