USE X and xauth dep were added to openssh ebuilds per bug #139235, but it seems completely pointless now: all xorg-server ebuild have xauth in RDEPEND, USE X in openssh ebuilds only adds xauth to RDEPEND and does nothing else. from x11-base/xorg-server/ChangeLog-2009: 12 Sep 2005; Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>; xorg-server-0.99.1-r8.ebuild: Add some deps so we get a server that actually runs after emerging it. In specific: media-fonts/font-misc-misc media-fonts/font-cursor-misc x11-misc/xbitmaps x11-misc/xkbdata x11-apps/iceauth x11-apps/rgb x11-apps/xauth x11-apps/xinit.
i don't think we should rely on that behavior
Do you mean that xauth can be removed from RDEPEND of xorg-server or that x11 related features of openssh can be used without xorg-server installed?
(In reply to Nikoli from comment #2) both