The stable version of media-sound/phonon in the tree depends on gstreamer and gst-plugins-base if the USE flag [gstreamer] is used, but this is not enough to play sounds. In my case I also had to emerge gst-plugins-alsa, gst-plugins-ogg and gst-plugins-vorbis, to play , e.g., system sounds in KDE. If phonon[gstreamer] depended on gst-plugins-meta, we would also emerge all the gstreamer plugins consistent with the system USE flags, and no manual merging of gst plugins would be necessary. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: # emerge --info Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.2, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.30-gentoo-r5 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.30-gentoo-r5-x86_64-Intel-R-_Pentium-R-_4_CPU_3.20GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:45:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 4.0_p28 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.8-r1 dev-lang/python: 2.6.2-r1 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.5.1-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 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="amd64" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=nocona -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /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" CXXFLAGS="-march=nocona -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache confcache distlocks fixpackages metadata-transfer parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict test unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/download/gentoo-mirror/ http://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gentoo/ http://gentoo.ynet.sk/pub http://ftp.spline.inf.fu-berlin.de/mirrors/gentoo/" LANG="it_IT.UTF-8" LC_ALL="it_IT.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="it" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" 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.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X Xaw3d a52 aac aalib acpi alsa amd64 ao audiofile bash-completion bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo caps cdda cddb cdparanoia cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt css cups curl dbus dga dio djvu dri dts dvd dvdr emboss encode exif expat fam fbcon ffmpeg fftw flac fontconfig foomaticdb fortran ftp gd gdbm geoip ggi gif gimp glut gmp gnutls gphoto2 gpm graphviz gstreamer gtk guile hal htmlhandbook iconv idn ieee1394 imagemagick imlib isdnlog java javascript jbig jikes jpeg jpeg2k kde kdeenablefinal lame lcms libcaca libnotify libsamplerate lm_sensors lua lzo mad maildir matroska memlimit mikmod mime mmap mmx mng modules mozilla mp3 mp4 mpeg mpi mplayer mudflap multilib musicbrainz ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin offensive ogg openal openexr opengl openmp pam pch pcre pdf perl png policykit posix ppds pppd python qt3support qt4 quicktime rdesktop readline recode reflection ruby samba sdl session sharedmem shorten sndfile sockets sox speex spell spl sse sse2 ssl startup-notification subversion svg symlink sysfs syslog sysvipc taglib tcl tcpd theora threads thunar tidy tiff timidity tk truetype unicode usb vcd vim-syntax vnc vorbis wmf wxwindows x264 xcb xcomposite xine xinerama xml xorg xosd xpm xscreensaver xulrunner xv xvid yahoo zlib" ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0 virmidi" 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 authn_alias authn_anon 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 deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CAMERAS="kodak ptp2" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="it" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
In fact, phonon should depend in gst-plugins-meta instead of -base. As the meta ebuild depends on base. But as noted by Paolo, base does not offer the needed functionality.
Fixed in CVS. Thanks for reporting!
