Slave I/O thread won't attempt to automatically reconnect to the master / error-code 1593

140111 17:02:01 [ERROR] Slave I/O: The slave I/O thread stops because SET @master_heartbeat_period on master failed. Error: , Error_code: 1593
140111 17:02:01 [Note] Slave I/O thread exiting, read up to log 'mysql-bin.015318', position 887067847

The error in question is:

$ perror 1593
MySQL error code 1593 (ER_SLAVE_FATAL_ERROR): Fatal error: %s

Percona Server 5.5.29-29.4 is running on the affected slave. Looking at the source code for that release, the problematic code path appears to be:

1536 if (mysql_real_query(mysql, query, strlen(query))
1537 && !check_io_slave_killed(mi->io_thd, mi, NULL))
1538 {
1539 errmsg= "The slave I/O thread stops because SET @master_heartbeat_period "
1540 "on master failed.";
1541 err_code= ER_SLAVE_FATAL_ERROR;
1542 sprintf(err_buff, "%s Error: %s", errmsg, mysql_error(mysql));
1543 mysql_free_result(mysql_store_result(mysql));
1544 goto err;
1545 }
1546 mysql_free_result(mysql_store_result(mysql));

I believe this exhibits a bug. Instead of just assuming the error is fatal, it should do "is_network_error(mysql_errno(mysql))" and determine whether the slave thread should be restarted (this is done in Percona Server 5.6.13, for instance).

Additionally, since there is already an error code from mysql_real_query, should it be later overwritten with ER_SLAVE_FATAL_ERROR?