Patching up Worpress 1.5.1 to fix feeds

So Wordpress just released 1.5.1.1 to fix the RSS problem which has bitten me badly too. The trouble is that I am getting sick of their manual upgrade steps - backup, overwrite, restore, etc. etc. when the only changes have been to the core files!

I wonder why they can’t release very minor releases (e.g. 1.5.1.1) as patches. Even minor releases (e.g. 1.5.1) can be released as patches - the database changes can be handled using the upgrade script which can itself be available as a patch.

Granted that patch is available only on Unix systems and that also on systems where you have shell access. But again, the general release is always available as a full download anyway, right?

Take this bugfix release for example. Here is the patch file I created for the 1.5.1.1 release. To upgrade all you have to do is to change directory to the wordpress root, and run patch -p1 < wordpress-1.5.1.1.patch. That is it! You have upgraded!