When I run "emerge -uvDN world", portage always wishes to reinstall dev-util/dialog with or without the nls USE flag, indicating (by way of a "%*" suffix) that this is a new flag which was not in the last version - but the last version is the current version! If I "equery uses dev-util/dialog", it lists only the "examples" and "unicode" flags. On the other hand, if I "eix -ev dev-util/dialog", it show me only unicode and examples USE flags after "USE:", but shows me "examples nls unicode" after "Available versions: ...". Here's the output of eix -ev dev-util/dialog $ eix -ev dev-util/dialog * dev-util/dialog Available versions: 1.1.20070227 (~)1.1.20070604 1.1.20070704 (~)1.1.20070930 {examples nls unicode} Installed versions: Version: 1.1.20070930 Date: 16:16:16 10/09/07 USE: unicode -examples Best versions/slot: (~)1.1.20070930 Homepage: http://invisible-island.net/dialog/dialog.html Description: tool to display dialog boxes from a shell License: GPL-2 Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge -uvDN world OR 1. emerge -uN dev-util/dialog
So re-emerge it if you want nls, or don't if you don't want it. What's your trouble?
You seem to have misunderstood. I can reemerge it all I like, that won't fix my problem. My problem is this: Whenever I emerge -uvDN world, it tries to reemerge the package, regardless of my USE flags. What seems to me to be happening, I describe below, but I could easily be wrong; whether or not I am correct, this is still a problem. It shouldn't keep trying to reemerge a package when I've already emerged that package and *absolutely nothing has changed* to make it need to reemerge. Something, somewhere is broken. What seems to me to be hapening is this: emerge seems to think that dev-util/dialog has an nls use flag, when every tool (except one part of eix's output) tells me that it does not have such a flag. Therefore, when I ask it to update, it decides to reemerge dev-util/dialog, either adding or removing the new USE flag "nls" from it, since it didn't have that USE flag in previous versions. I suggest you take a closer look at the eix output I provided. Doesn't it strike you as odd that "nls" is listed as a USE flag after the "Available versions" string but is not listed as a USE flag after "USE:"?
Fix/update your eix cache (or any other tools cache); there's nothing wrong the ebuild.
