Might just be my lack of reading ability:-) but it appears from the handbook that after emerge'ing gentoolkit, you can use equery uses as a direct replacement for emerge -pv for packages that are not yet installed.
What exactly are you suggesting? Please be more clear. Your bug summary suggests one thing, while your description says another, and it isn't clear what you mean. The Portage handbook touches on some possible uses of equery, but equery certainly isn't a replacement for emerge -pv!
Well, 'equery uses' is completely useless for checking available use flags unless you have the relevant ebuild already merged. The only thing it produces is: [ Searching for packages matching apache... ] !!! No matching packages found for "apache" So, "now run equery with the uses argument to view the USE-flags of a certain package. For instance, for the gnumeric package" doesn't make much sense unless you have already that ebuild installed, and at that point you usually don't want to check for use flags, it's too late.
You need the -a flag on equery, eg. equery uses =kde-base/akregator-3.5.1 -a emerge -vp is easier, displays the packages it would install and their use flags. equery uses ... would display all versions of a single package only, you need to provide a full atom if you want the latest version. The only advantage of equery is that it displays the USE flag descriptions
From the page http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=2 (USE Flags), Section 2.c makes it appear that you can use equery uses to check the use-flags of a package (which is correct), but does not mention that you need to have built the package... <quote> Let us take the example of mozilla: what USE-flags does it listen to? To find out, we use emerge with the --pretend and --verbose options: <code snippet /> emerge isn't the only tool for this job. In fact, we have a tool dedicated to package information called equery which resides in the gentoolkit package. First, install gentoolkit: <code snippet /> Now run equery with the uses argument to view the USE-flags of a certain package. For instance, for the gnumeric package: </quote> Although (admittedly) it follows the section on actually building the package, it can easily be taken out of context (well I did it).
In case you haven't noticed, the bug has been reopened.
(In reply to comment #3) > You need the -a flag on equery, eg. equery uses =kde-base/akregator-3.5.1 -a > > emerge -vp is easier, displays the packages it would install and their use > flags. Well yeah, I'm aware of -a option, but it's not suggested to use that in the guide and besides, it floods you w/ pretty verbose use flags output for every single version of that ebuild in portage - may be useful for specific purposes but emerge -pv is really what I'd prefer here. Nothing major anyway.
I've added -a and =version there.
