On either a ~x86 or ~sparc system, if I enable the static useflag, the opera-7.23-r1 ebuild always downloads and installs the shared version. the qt dependency is handled correctly, but the source file selection doesn't seem to. The strange part is emerge -pv opera seems to be handing it right, but not an actual emerge.
you have to set use=static before emerge rsync, this is currently broken due a bug in portage which will be fixed in 2.0.50-r2
It just happens that the use is badly used: citron:/usr/portage/net-www/opera$ grep use opera-7.23-r1.ebuild if [ `use static` ]; then if [ "`use operanom2`" ]; then the static use is missing the "" ... And it works fine when you add them.