This feature simply doesn’t work, and no one is working on it. Retaining it as it is is useless, and reimplementing this either as a plugin, or an external distribution system is the way to go. For example, this could be an excellent addition to the Traffic Control framework that is being OpenSourced by Comcast.
Eliminating this feature would also remove the configuration file update.config. This is tracked in the Jira https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TS-3543 Unless we hear otherwise within 1 week, this will be implemented for 6.0.0. — Leif