It would be helpful is portage would specify whether a masked package is blocked by /etc/portage/package.mask or by /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask. As it is, both show up as "(masked by: package.mask)" in the output of an "emerge foo" command. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Portage 2.0.50-r1 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3_pre20040207-r0, 2.6.3-love3) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.3-love3 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2100+ Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.13p1 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r3 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.us.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="3dnow S3TC X aalib acpi acpi4linux alsa apm avi berkdb breakme canna cjk crypt dvd encode esd evo faad fbcon flac foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gnutls gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml java jikes jpeg libg++ libwww mad matroska mikmod mmx mozilla moznocompose moznoirc moznomail mpeg ncurses nls nptl nviz offensive oggvorbis opengl oss pam pda pdflib perl pic png python quicktime readline sdl slang speex spell sse ssl tcltk tcpd tiff truetype v4l wmf x86 xml2 xmms xv zlib"
Putting a hold on feature requests for portage as they are drowning out the bugs. Most of these features should be available in the next major version of portage. But for the time being, they are just drowning out the major bugs and delaying the next version's progress. Any bugs that contain patches and any bugs for etc-update or dispatch-conf can be reopened. Sorry, I'm just not good enough with bugzilla. ;)
Reopening for consideration