Uhm...

was working with some old (Moodle 1.4) backups.... trying to restore them to 1.8 and 1.9... and under 1.9, course blocks are lost.

Reviewing revisions I've arrived to MDL-8270.

It seems that the

if (!empty($CFG->showblocksonmodpages))

condition, is being applied when the course is an old one (containing course->blockinfo, instead of instances). I think that, in those backups, there are only PAGE_COURSE_VIEW blocks so, the check of $CFG->showblocksonmodpages isn't correct there at all.

Instead, it should be (and there it's) in the restore_create_block_instances() method, that is the one used when we have block instances from different pages.

So... I'm going to delete that condition when restoring old courses.

Ciao