Database migration from 1.5 to 1.6 to 1.7 to 1.8 - some int columns should be changed to bigint. Bug triggered by block "course_format_page"

I apologize if this has been reported already! I searched but I just couldn't find it.

I recently had to migrate a v1.5.3 site to a v1.8.2 codebase. The Moodle.org recommended steps are to migrate incrementally through versions: 1.5->1.6->1.7->1.8

I did that, and was successful. EXCEPT one block, "course_format_page", which has an unusual piece of code for its version checking section in that it adds a 1 to the end of the version number, which makes the version number bigger than an int().

The problem is twofold:

1) Somewhere in the database migration, the int() columns for the mdl_block table should all be changed to bigint(). (And, presumably, many other tables, but only the mdl_block table was the problem in this instance).

2) The code in <MOODLE>/blocks/course_format_page/block_course_format_page.php on line 24 triggers the bug if the int() column "mdl_blocks.version" has not been changed to bigint()

What happens is that the column gets "truncated" to the maximum int() value, or 2^32-1: 2147483647

EXAMPLE:
mysql> select * from mdl_block where version not like '200%';
-----------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

This value always gets tested as a newer value than the existing block, and the upgrade process hangs with "a newer version of course_formata_page exists"

SOLUTION:
Actually, there are several possible solutions.

1) The most generally applicable one is to change the int() column to a bigint(). This is what I did and it worked.

2) Fix the code in the upgrade process to make sure all int() columns that need to be are changed to bigint(). I don't know where this process broke down for me, unfortunately.

3) Fix the code in the block_course_format_page.php file to not just add a one, but instead to change the number to a valid int that is the right size. This should probably be done for this block regardless, as it is a bit divergent from the way version checking is done elsewhere.

4) Change all "version" columns to "date" types. I don't think this is really feasible at this point.

5) Change version usage to Unix timestamp value. Also probably not feasible at this point.

Thanks! Have a great day, as my son would say...