grip 2.98.2 requires gnome to build, but the dependencies are not set in the ebuild file. The previous version (2.96-r3) does not need gnome, and its ebuild file is available, but portage defaults to the higher version.
specifically, it requires gnome-base/gnome-libs and gnome-base/libghttp. (sorry, should've researched further before submitting the original bug)
Fixed in grip-2.98.3
hmm .. it should be able to build without gnome? shouldn't it? looks in the configure.in like it's checking if gnome is around. I've added gnome if gnome is in USE. please reopen this if this is not true.
It does require gnome to build. If gnomeConf.sh is not found, configure dies. You can trick configure by specifying --without-gnome, but then it just won't compile (see the #include <gnome.h> in src/main.c). Is portage smart enough that we can build 2.98.x if (USE gnome) and 2.96 if not?
I removed the conditional gnome-support. 2.98.3 now always depends on GNOME.