The recently stabled x11-libs/gtk+-3.8.7 adds a dependency on app-accessibility/at-spi2-atk, which wasn't there in 3.4. That dependency apparently was added between 3.4 and 3.6, but I couldn't find out why exactly it is required. Grepping the source only yields various matches on "spinning", and neither the upstream nor the ebuild changelog mentions anything about it. Also the description doesn't sound like it should be required everywhere, as not everyone needs accessibility features. My problem with this new dependency is that it in turn pulls in sys-apps/dbus, which I'd prefer not to install just for this one application which I won't need anyway. So it would be nice if you could check out if this is really required unconditionally or if it could be moved behind a USE flag.
It's explained here: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2012-June/msg00035.html
Thanks for the pointer. But why does this render this bug INVALID? The author also talks about the possibility of conditional dependencies (right at the end). Is there no way to build the gtk+ core without at-spi2-atk? After all, the whole point of USE flags is to have only those things one actually wants. I probably wouldn't care too much if this was only about at-spi2-atk, but as I already pointed out, that package in turn depends on dbus, which seems a bit excessive to me just for one package whose functionality I don't even need.
I was sure this was already discussed but couldn't find the bug until now ;) *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 485612 ***
