why not change coreutils ebuild to provide sys-apps/{text|file|sh}-utils like the coreutils 4* ebuild. Now portage wants to merge 3 blank packages that just point at coreutils anyway?
on second thought, could just change the profiles and delete the ebuilds for the utils, and add a pkg_posinst reminding users to unmerge those outdated packages
this is the plan for when coreutils hits stable, actually -- while in ~arch, I will leave the profiles as is.
done
emerge -ep system still shows all packages. only arch which isn't stable now is ppc. would be nice if this changes, cause emerge still want's to install the 3 old packages
it shows them because you have meta packages for fileutils, sh-utils and textutils installed. if you remove those, they won't show any more.