How to rename a field with hook_ds_fields_info()
I managed to implement this, thanks to @aspilicious.

See
- https://drupal.org/node/2190599
- http://drupalcode.org/project/views_content_ds.git/blob/refs/heads/7.x-2.x:/views_content_ds.install

The solution is to edit this directly in the database, with db_update() called from hook_update_N().

The tables are ds_field_settings and ds_layout_settings. Columns you need (same for both tables):


'id' is the primary key. Typical value: taxonomy_term|categories|full
'settings' holds the settings (field settings or layout settings), serialized.


Use drush sqlc + describe (table) to look at the table structure.

It also helps to implement the upgrade as a drush command, ideally with a downgrade option. This allows to quickly test this a lot of times, which is not that easy with hook_update_N().