Feature: pool `connectionLifeTime` (max connection age) option for connection recycling

[aistrati]

mysql2's pool can only recycle connections when they're idle (idleTimeout + maxIdle).
There's no way to cap a connection's maximum age. Under sustained load a connection never
goes idle, so it lives indefinitely and stays pinned to whichever backend it first connected to.

This is a problem when the pool sits in front of a load-balanced / elastic MySQL topology:

• Aurora / RDS reader endpoints: each pooled connection is routed to one reader for its
  lifetime. When a reader is added (auto-scaling) or after a failover, existing
  long-lived connections don't move — the new capacity stays underused until connections churn.
  (RDS Proxy's reader endpoint doesn't fix this; it also pins a connection to a single reader.)
• Any HAProxy / NLB / proxy setup where you want connections to periodically re-resolve and
  rebalance.

A max-lifetime (with jitter) is the standard remedy — e.g. HikariCP maxLifetime, and the
legacy mysqljs/mysql had this via a community fork - https://github.com/vita-mojo/mysql. mysql2 has no equivalent as far as i know.

Describe the solution you'd like

A pool option that discards a connection once it exceeds a maximum age, replacing it on next
borrow, with small random jitter to avoid a synchronized die-off:

mysql.createPool({
  // ...
  maxLifetime: 600000, // ms; 0 = unlimited (default). Recycle connections older than this.
});

• Name maxLifetime (ms) to match HikariCP and mysql2's existing ms conventions
  (idleTimeout). (The mysqljs/mysql fork called it connectionLifeTime in seconds — either
  is fine, but ms + maxLifetime is more consistent here.)
• Apply built-in jitter (e.g. up to 5–10%) so pooled connections don't all expire at once.

Proposed implementation

We've run this behaviour in production for a long time via a fork of the legacy mysqljs/mysql
driver that adds a connectionLifeTime option (in seconds)
(mysqljs/mysql@master...vita-mojo:mysql:master), and we're now
carrying the same logic on mysql2 as a patch-package patch. We'd like to see it upstream, as
mysql2 has no equivalent.

The sketch below is the same ~30-line change, but renamed to the proposed upstream API
— maxLifetime in milliseconds (to match idleTimeout and HikariCP) instead of the fork's
connectionLifeTime in seconds. Naming/units are of course open to whatever maintainers prefer.
Mapped onto mysql2's current internals:

lib/pool_config.js — parse the option:

this.maxLifetime = isNaN(options.maxLifetime) ? 0 : Number(options.maxLifetime);

lib/pool_connection.js — stamp an expiry on creation (with jitter):

if (pool.config.maxLifetime > 0) {
  const jitter = Math.floor(Math.random() * (pool.config.maxLifetime / 20 + 1)); // up to 5%
  this._expiresAt = Date.now() + pool.config.maxLifetime - jitter;
}

lib/base/pool.js — in getConnection, skip/close expired free connections instead of
handing them out:

while (this._freeConnections.length > 0) {
  connection = this._freeConnections.pop();
  if (connection._expiresAt && Date.now() > connection._expiresAt) {
    connection._pool = null;
    spliceConnection(this._allConnections, connection);
    connection.destroy();       // frees the slot; a fresh connection is created below
    continue;
  }
  this.emit('acquire', connection);
  return process.nextTick(() => { connection._released = false; cb(null, connection); });
}

Plus: register maxLifetime so it isn't flagged by the "invalid configuration option"
validation in lib/connection_config.js. (Optional enhancement: also proactively close expired
connections in the existing _removeIdleTimeoutConnections sweep so they don't linger until the
next borrow.)

Alternatives considered

• idleTimeout / maxIdle — idle-based only; busy connections never recycle.
• App-level recycling / scheduled process restarts — works but coarse and app-specific.
• RDS Proxy — helps failover / writer pooling, but its reader endpoint still pins a
  connection to a single reader, so it doesn't rebalance reads after scaling.

Prior art

• HikariCP maxLifetime (de-facto standard for JDBC pools).
• mysqljs/mysql community fork adding connectionLifeTime.

I'm happy to open a PR with the implementation above + tests if maintainers are open to it.

[aistrati]

As a workaround for above problem we created a fork and published it to npm - https://www.npmjs.com/package/@vita-mojo/mysql2
Tested on our pre-live environment and seems to work fine.

here is the commit for diff - 30dc967