svgalib 1.9.21 and 1.9.24 don't compile with KBUILD_OUTPUT. When I replaced BUILD_PARAMS="KDIR=${KV_DIR}" with BUILD_PARAMS="KDIR=${KV_OUT_DIR}" in pkg_setup() of ebuild, it worked. From error messages: make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.15-gentoo-r1' Makefile:486: .config: No such file or directory ... several hundreds of include-related warnings .... I assume that there should be KV_OUT_DIR there because .config is in KV_OUT_DIR.
your correct, KDIR should be KV_OUT_DIR in many cases, and people often incorrectly use KV_DIR in its place. Not quite sure why this was assigned to kernel@, but this has been altered as per neccessary in CVS. Will wait for it to stablise before we change .21. Mike, hope you were OK with this.