There is a circular dependency between cups and foormatic-filters if ppds and cups USE flags are present: cups depends on foomatic-filters-ppds with USE=ppds foomatic-filters-ppds in turn depends on net-print/foomatic-filters however foomatic-filters depends on cups with cups USE flag. When emerging cups, it pulls foomatic-filters first, which then fails with not finding a2ps, enscript, mpage or CUPS' texttops - portage seems to make it assume cups dep is satisfied, as to not go into a circular dep or something like that - and there is no enscript, a2ps or mpage on the system either. However, it's still a circular dep that stops me from installing a fresh system without some workarounds. Probably related to this, with emerging a certain different package, that pulls in cups, portage resolved ghostscript-gpl to be emerged before cups (probably due to the circular deps), and that failed to compile of course due to lack of cups headers.
emerge --info for the machine the problem on fresh install happened (note ~x86): Gentoo Base System version 1.12.4 Portage 2.1.1_rc1-r2 (default-linux/x86/2006.1, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1500+ Last Sync: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 22:50:01 +0000 app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present] dev-lang/python: 2.4.3-r3 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.60 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.17 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r3 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.17 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" ACCEPT_LICENSE="" ARCH="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -Os -pipe -ftracer -fomit-frame-pointer -momit-leaf-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CLEAN_DELAY="5" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/terminfo" CVS_RSH="ssh" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -Os -pipe -ftracer -fomit-frame-pointer -momit-leaf-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" DVB_CARDS="" EDITOR="/bin/nano" ELIBC="glibc" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--ask --verbose" EMERGE_WARNING_DELAY="10" FCDSL_CARDS="" FEATURES="autoconfig ccache distlocks metadata-transfer parallel-fetch sandbox sfperms strict userpriv usersandbox" FETCHCOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -t 5 -T 60 --passive-ftp -P ${DISTDIR} ${URI}" FRITZCAPI_CARDS="" GCC_SPECS="" GDK_USE_XFT="1" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.linux.ee/pub/gentoo/distfiles/ ftp://trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/gentoo/ http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" G_BROKEN_FILENAMES="1" G_FILENAME_ENCODING="UTF-8" HOME="/root" HUSHLOGIN="FALSE" INFOPATH="/usr/share/info:/usr/share/binutils-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/2.17/info::/usr/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.1.1/info" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LESS="-R -M --shift 5" LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s" LINGUAS="et et_EE" LIRC_DEVICES="" LOGNAME="root" MAIL="/var/mail/root" MAKEOPTS="-j2" MANPATH="/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/share/binutils-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/2.17/man::/usr/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.1.1/man" OLDPWD="/etc" OPENGL_PROFILE="xorg-x11" PAGER="/usr/bin/less" PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.1.1:/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.1.1" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_ARCHLIST="ppc s390 amd64 ppc64 x86-fbsd m68k arm sparc sh mips ia64 alpha ppc-macos hppa x86" PORTAGE_BINHOST_CHUNKSIZE="3000" PORTAGE_BIN_PATH="/usr/lib/portage/bin" PORTAGE_CALLER="emerge" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_DEBUG="0" PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="warn error log" PORTAGE_ELOG_MAILFROM="portage" PORTAGE_ELOG_MAILSUBJECT="[portage] ebuild log for ${PACKAGE} on ${HOST}" PORTAGE_ELOG_MAILURI="root" PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save" PORTAGE_GID="250" PORTAGE_INST_GID="0" PORTAGE_INST_UID="0" PORTAGE_NICENESS="10" PORTAGE_PYM_PATH="/usr/lib/portage/pym" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'" PORTAGE_RSYNC_RETRIES="3" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTAGE_WORKDIR_MODE="0700" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/gnome-experimental" PRELINK_PATH="" PRELINK_PATH_MASK="/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10" PWD="/root" PYTHONPATH="/usr/lib/portage/pym" RESUMECOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -c -t 5 -T 60 --passive-ftp -P ${DISTDIR} ${URI}" ROOT="/" ROOTPATH="/opt/bin:/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.1.1:/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.1.1" RPMDIR="/usr/portage/rpm" SHELL="/bin/bash" SHLVL="1" STAGE1_USE="nptl nptlonly unicode" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" TERM="linux" USE="x86 X acpi alsa avahi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts branding bzip2 cairo cli crypt cups dbus djvu dlloader dmi dri elibc_glibc esd expat gdbm gnome gnutls gpm gstreamer gtk hal input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse ipv6 isdnlog jpeg kernel_linux libg++ linguas_et linguas_et_EE mpeg nautilus ncurses nls nptl nptlonly pam pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl svg tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode userland_GNU video_cards_mach64 wmf xorg xv zlib" USER="root" USERLAND="GNU" USE_EXPAND="DVB_CARDS ELIBC FCDSL_CARDS FRITZCAPI_CARDS INPUT_DEVICES KERNEL LINGUAS LIRC_DEVICES USERLAND VIDEO_CARDS" USE_EXPAND_HIDDEN="ELIBC KERNEL USERLAND" USE_ORDER="env:pkg:conf:defaults" VIDEO_CARDS="mach64" XARGS="xargs -r" _="/usr/bin/emerge"
made it a PDEPEND
