The portage version app-emacs/bbdb-2.35-r1 is fairly out of date. Reproducible: Always
Created attachment 377804 [details] build.log Byte compilation fails when bbdb-2.35 is installed.
Please have upstream fix their build system (it shouldn't fail when the old version is installed on the system), then reopen.
Created attachment 377806 [details] build.log Sorry, wrong file.
Work in progress is in the Emacs overlay: <http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/emacs.git;a=tree;f=app-emacs/bbdb>
Upstream bug report: http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?42482
bbdb-3.1.2 committed to CVS. Thanks for reporting.