Getting a non-zero error code from httpd(1) if the application doesn't compile

Maybe this is something elementary that I've just missed, but it seems
to me that when transitioning from mod_perl 1 to 2 there's no way to
get a non-zero exit code from Apache if your application has
compilation errors.

I have an application that I'm loading like this:

    PerlPostConfigRequire     /usr/local/myapp/startup.pm

And in that file I do:

    use strict;
    use warnings;

    use Apache2::ServerUtil ();

    BEGIN {
        die "Only makes sense when running under mod_perl\n" if !$ENV{MOD_PERL};

        # We don't want to run this in the first Apache startup phase or
        # we'll start up a useless instance of our application that'll
        # consume memory
        unless (Apache2::ServerUtil::restart_count() > 1) {
            print STDERR "Running in Apache initialization phase #1\n";
            return;
        }

        require lib;
        lib->import('/usr/local/myapp/lib');

        # Preload everything
        require MyApp::Preload;
        require MyApp::Apache::Handler;
    }

    1;

And even though I've inserted a "die" at line two of Handler.pm when
starting I get:

    $ date; time sudo /usr/sbin/httpd; echo $?
    Sat Oct 15 17:50:24 CEST 2011

    real    0m1.113s
    user    0m0.045s
    sys     0m0.035s
    0

At which point httpd returns zero exit code, but then proceeds to
start up my application, only later will I get this in the error log:

    [Sat Oct 15 17:50:31 2011] [error] Died at
/usr/local/myapp/lib/MyApp/Apache/Handler.pm line 2

Of course if I load the application both when restart_count() == 1 and
>1 I'll get an error, but I'll also waste a lot of memory since I'll
be keeping around a copy of the application.

The reason I want to have a non-zero exit code if the application has
an error when initializing is that I have some production systems that
indicate problems if the startup fails, and while we could start up,
wait a bit, and then try if a http requests succeeds I'd rather change
how Apache operates than changing those systems if possible.

As far as I can tell my only options are:

 * To find some Apache config option to make the server wait until
   it's successfully loaded mod_perl in restart_count() > 1. This
   option has thus far evaded be and it might not exist at all.

 * Wrap Apache in an init script that forks, and then either polls
   http:// or does an strace() and waits for sign of successfully
   forked children.

 * Change the startup.pm to have something like:

        unless (Apache2::ServerUtil::restart_count() > 1) {
            print STDERR "Running in Apache initialization phase #1\n";
            system $^X => qw(MyApp::Apache::Handler -e1) and die $!;
            return;
        }

   Which would slow down our startup, but wouldn't take up a
   unnecessary amount of memory by keeping a the restart_count() ==
   1's processes require()'d modules around.