"emerge --ignore-default-opts -p dev-tex/luatex" says that it needs to be updated, but "emerge --ignore-default-opts -pN dev-tex/luatex" lists nothing to be updated. My usual "emerge world" (with 'EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--ask --tree --verbose --deep --usepkg --newuse"') only shows packages with new USE flags, and then fails to resolve a blocker due to not updating luatex to a version that depends on the modern poppler package name. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: This started happening when I switched from portage 2.1.6.13 to 2.1.7.16. I haven't determined yet whether this only applies to updates from versions installed by earlier versions of portage, or whether a package installed by portage 2.1.7.x will be updated. I can provide excepts from /var/db/pkg/ and such if it would help, and I can test fixes or patches to add debugging if it's hard to reproduce this without my particular package history. I believe that running emerge without --newuse works for getting necessary updates, as a workaround.
Not a bug, but expected behavior. You want to add the --update or -u option.
"--update" does solve my actual problem, but there's an oddity that was making it hard to understand: --newuse implies --selective, even though the documentation of --newuse doesn't suggest anything of the sort and the documentation of --selective only suggests that they work together. With --selective=n, my commands still don't work, but it becomes obvious how 3.1.17.x is different from 3.1.16.x (that is, I need to use --update explicitly). Of course, --newuse isn't terribly useful without --selective, since it would only apply to deps with changed USE flags, but it is surprising to add an unrequested flag just to make the user's weird request good for something. Not adding a flag is a better hint that the user might want to add a different flag. At the very least, the documentation for --newuse needs to mention that it could in some situations lead to fewer packages emerged rather than more. (Summary updated to reflect the actual unexpected behavior)
Ok, in svn r15346 I've updated the --newuse docs to indicate that this option also implies --selective.
This is fixed in 2.1.8 and 2.2_rc64.
