A command line upgrade is probably the most reasonable path given that:
- php has a max_execution_time (typical default is 30 for apache; 0 for the cli)
- apache and iis have max timeouts of 300 (again default)

Going forward, users should be encouraged to stay up-to-date with releases to avoid large database updates.

in a future version (Maciej is working on it) there will be rather big schema update (adding one field to piwik_log_link_visit_action, adding field in piwik_log_visit)..

This problem will happen again. What should we do to quick fix it?

A "command line" message below the normal "Welcome to Piwik! You need to update [...] If your Piwik database is large or very large and you have a shell access to your Piwik server, you can trigger the update by using the following command line: /usr/bin/php5 /path/to/piwik/index.php updateCorePlugins=1" or something similar?

+1

anybody implementing this ticket should feel evil.

Feeling evil...

the command line tool, if this is the direction are going, could maybe read the max execution time from the config, and let the user know "Your max execution time is Xmin. If you have a medium or large Piwik installation, maybe you would like to increase this limit. Look for X in your php.ini."

(In [1319]) refs #666 - record version of incremental updates as they are done

(In [1351]) fixes #894, refs #666 - fix problems and inconsistencies between fresh install and upgrade path

Only the utf8 side-effects of converting of TEXT columns to MEDIUMTEXT columns was unchanged.

(In [1375]) fixes #666 - command line update, e.g., (if a database upgrade is required)

    you@home:/var/www/piwik$ php index.php

(Progress bar deferred to #910.)