Don't know whether to file this as a feature request or a documentation request - it's more of a question. With non-FOSS packages like www-client/opera, it's useful to fake USE=$ARCH to follow the unpack / install phases for other binary SRC_URIs than what you happen to run `ebuild opera*.ebuild unpack' on. It used to be possible to just do `USE=$target_arch ebuild opera*.ebuild unpack' but that has recently been "fixed", it seems. I don't know the workaround for this problem, it isn't documented, and if there is no other way to fake an arch, then I want this to be its feature request form. :)
The change that you are observing is probably the fact that the profiles now masks ARCH flags that do no correspond to the current ARCH. You can probably get the behavior that you want by modifying /etc/portage/profile/use.{mask,force}. For example, to force amd64 on an x86 profile, do this: echo -amd64 >> /etc/portage/profile/use.mask echo amd64 >> /etc/portage/profile/use.force
Which is to say, I can't do it on the spot, per ebuild, as per `ebuild foo.ebuild bar'? Then I request that as a features, as tinkering with the local /etc would be generally bad in simply testing ebuilds.
