Setup: I have a server set up to use binary packages generated by a similarly setup box. In this example, gentoolkit is up-to-date on the server, has no use flag changes, but the binary package file is newer (it was rebuilt on the source box due to a python update). Steps to reproduce: 1. run "emerge -vatkN --with-bdeps=y --alphabetical -1D gentoolkit" 2. emerge will return that it won't emerge any packages. 3. run "emerge -vatk --with-bdeps=y --alphabetical -1D gentoolkit" 4. emerge returns that the package will be reinstalled. Reasoning: According to "emerge --help": --newuse (-N short option) Tells emerge to include installed packages where USE flags have changed since installation. This says to me that --newuse should not drop packages from the list of packages to be installed, only add them to the list. emerge --info: Portage 2.2_rc40 (default/linux/x86/2008.0, gcc-4.3.2, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.18xenucorona0 i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.18xenucorona0-i686-Intel-R-_Xeon-R-_CPU_5148_@_2.33GHz-with-gentoo-1.12.11.1 Timestamp of tree: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:30:01 +0000 app-shells/bash: 3.2_p39 dev-lang/python: 2.5.4-r3, 2.6.2-r1 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r1, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6a virtual/os-headers: 2.6.27-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/init.d /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d /usr/share/X11/xkb" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="-vatkN --alphabetical --with-bdeps=y" FEATURES="assume-digests collision-protect distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv" GENTOO_MIRRORS=" http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo http://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/ http://pandemonium.tiscali.de/pub/gentoo/ http://gentoo.virginmedia.com/ " LANG="en_GB" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en" PKGDIR="/home/allen/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude-from=/etc/portage/rsync_excludes" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="acl apache2 bash-completion bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cups dri fortran iconv idn ipv6 isdnlog ithreads mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly older-kernels-compatibility openmp pam pcre perl pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl subversion sysfs tcpd threads unicode vhosts webdev-neon x86 xorg zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic auth_digest authn_anon authn_dbd authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock dbd deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers ident imagemap include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation proxy proxy_ajp proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_http rewrite setenvif so speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" APACHE2_MPMS="worker" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev glint intel mach64 mga neomagic nv r128 radeon savage sis tdfx trident vesa vga via vmware voodoo" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS
What you are observing is that --newuse implies the equivalent of the new --binpkg-respect-use option. Since it's available as a separate option now, I suppose it won't hurt to remove that behavior from --newuse.