Backing up old installed files?

[Darren Pilgrim]

I'm writing a port for a script that stores the configuration data in 
the same file as the program code itself.  The long-term solution is to 
move the configuration data to another file, of course; however, that's 
proving to be a far slower process than originally expected.

Other than delaying the submission until the configuration data is split 
from the script, what can/should I do?