[ic] Perl, debian packages, and the usual issues.

[Jeff Fearn]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:31:43 +0000, Jamie Neil <jamie at versado.net> wrote:
> Cameron G wrote:
>
> What I don't understand is why this separate Perl workaround is still
> necessary. It seems that the problem with IC and threaded Perl is not
> Perl itself but the DBI or DBD::mysql modules. Now DBI is (AFAIK) a very
> widely used Perl module, and MySQL is the most popular database out
> there, so now that almost every current Linux distribution ships with a
> threaded Perl, why has this issue not been fixed? Is Interchange the
> _only_ application out there that has issues with threaded Perl? Surely
> if the problem lies in the DBI modules then many other applications
> would be affected?

>From the docs for DBI 1.46 (November 2004): "Using DBI with perl
threads is not yet recommended for production environments."

It appears that DBI is thread safe, but that some DBD modules are the problem.

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/perl-DBI-Dev/2241844

DBD:mysql thread safety depends on the way the C libs are compiled.

http://search.cpan.org/~rudy/DBD-mysql-2.9004/lib/DBD/mysql.pm#MULTITHREADING

The question seems to be how many DBD modules are thread safe and what
conditions need to be met to enable this behaviour in each DBD module.

I'm thinking that writing an installer to check all that out would be
... very challenging.

Jeff