double mod_perl initialization

[Jonathan Swartz]

I was looking into why our server's restarts take so long, and I  
finally remembered that Apache runs its initialization step twice on  
startup (http://tinyurl.com/krr25). This means that my startup.pl is  
loaded twice, along with any modules that it loads.

So I moved startup.pl to startup_real.pl and put this in startup.pl:
    # Only run our real startup script the second time.
    #
    use Apache2::ServerUtil ();
    if (Apache2::ServerUtil::restart_count() > 1) {
       require 'startup_real.pl';
    }

And it shaved a bunch of time off our restart.

As I understand it, the sole purpose of this double initialization is  
to make sure that graceful restarts will work. However, since I was a  
young mod_perl lad I've been taught never to rely on graceful  
restarts, and always to stop/start.

If I don't ever plan to use graceful restarts, and I believe that  
smaller restart times are an unqualified Good, is there any reason why  
I shouldn't ALWAYS use a script like the above? And is there any way  
to avoid PerlModule modules from being loaded twice?

Thanks
Jon