Recent stage3 tarballs have switched to using /etc/portage/make.conf, but app-portage/layman still references /etc/make.conf in pkg_postinst. It should be modified to say /etc/portage/make.conf if ${ROOT}/etc/portage/make.conf exists.
Created attachment 328478 [details, diff] layman-1.4.2.-r3.patch I don't know if it has to be written in a more sophisticated way other than a simple if. Anyway I've included the simple change.
I had already changed that for rc4 and -9999. I was intending on removing the 1.4 series as soon as 2.0 was stabilized. I was intending that would be before Christmas, so wasn't going to worry about it. Thank you for the patch... applied.