[ic] mysql having problems reconnecting on catalog reconfig

[Peter]

I'm having problems with IC 5.7 (latest GIT HEAD), perl 5.12.4 and
mysql.  When a catalog reconfig is done none of the sql tables would
load back up all giving errors like this in catalog.cfg:

table 'variants' failed: table variants connect failed -- unknown error.
Driver 'mysql' installed?

I traced the problem down to DBI.pm and found that if I change line 372
from:

$db = DBI->connect( @call ) unless $bad;

...to:

$db = DBI->connect( @call );

...then everything now works again.  It would seem that for some reason
the ached connection goes bad, but it all comes back to life if I allow
an attempt to go through to reconnect.

I then checked the git logs to find out the history behind that line of
code and traced it back to this commit:

https://github.com/interchange/interchange/commit/17a12070#L0R372

I'm not sure I really understand what the problem was that was fixed
back in 2001 by this commit, but perhaps someone (Mike?) could shed some
light on it?  It seems to make sense to me to try to connect again if
the connection goes bad, so why are we not doing that now?  Is there any
other light that can be shed on this problem?


Peter