mod_mono shouldn't automatically depend on xsp, as mod_mono is used for numerous other tasks aside from providing ASP.NET support; in such cases, installing xsp is unnecessary. It would be quite helpful to have ASP.NET support available through an optional USE flag as opposed to being mandatory for all users.
mod_mono should DEPEND on xsp, as xsp provides the mod-mono-server assembly, which in-turn provides us with support for ASP.NET (for Apache). What numerous other tasks is mod_mono useful for? :/
The most typical usage is with ASP.NET, however the page rendering process can be passed off to other .NET services. http://www.govtrack.us/articles/20041003.xpd is a crude example of this. Specifically, it's possible to override the default ASP.NET request handling (thereby bypassing ASP.NET) by directing the module to any type that implements IHttpHandler. From the above link, as an example: "When mod_mono receives a request for a .xpd page, it sends the request on to XPD.HttpHandler's ProcessRequest method, passing a System.Web.HttpContext object. Even though ASP.NET is overridden with the custom handler, the entire System.Web namespace is at my disposal" Therefore, for example, it's feasible to define a simple XML syntax that can be placed into a file, and have a custom .NET handler implement any type of functionality, as requested by the XML "instructions": <page> <module name="articles"> <article_id>1330</article_id> </module> <module name="some_provider_of_additional_functionality"> <some_processing_instructions/> </module> </page> Using a similar implementation, one could quite easily forego the use of web scripting languages alltogether and create an entire content management system, written entirely in .NET modules.
But, for that scenario to work (or any other that utilises the .NET framework), XSP is needed (as it provides mod-mono-server). mod_mono does hardly anything without it, thus the need for mod_mono to DEPEND on xsp. In the future, and if mod_mono advances in such a way that XSP is no longer needed as a request handler (i.e., the runtime embedded into Apache), the dependency could be dropped - until then, it needs to stay.
You may be correct; I haven't had the time to delve into the mod_mono source code to determine whether a solution could be reverse-engineered to remove that dependency, however I'd like the opportunity to discuss the technical aspect of this with the mono-devel mailing list before the bug is rubber-stamped. Please leave the bug unresolved for a few days to allow for discussion time, I'll forward along anything pertinent.
Feel free to drop by #gentoo-apache (irc.freenode.net) to discuss this. This is definately something I'll be working on with the mono guys anyhow. :)
Less than ideal behavior, but not a bug.
