nhh221 ~ # emerge -p ntp These are the packages that I would merge, in order: Calculating dependencies ...done! [ebuild N ] dev-java/blackdown-jdk-1.4.1 [ebuild N ] dev-lang/swig-1.3.21 [ebuild N ] sys-libs/libcap-1.10-r3 [ebuild N ] net-misc/ntp-4.2.0-r2 Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual Results: nhh221 ~ # emerge info Portage 2.0.50-r9 (default-x86-2004.2, gcc-3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r1, 2.6.7-gentoo-r14) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.7-gentoo-r14 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r4 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ http://www.gigaload.org/gentoo.org/ http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/os/linux/gentoo http://gentoo.inode.at/ http://gentoo.zie.pg.gda.pl" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X acpi alsa apm arts avi berkdb cddb crypt cups dvd dvdr dvdread encode f77 foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 imlib innodb java jpeg kde libg++ libwww linguas_de mad mbox mikmod motif mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline sdl slang spell ssl svga tcpd truetype x86 xml2 xmms xv zlib"
It's libcap that has a depend on swig when you have USE="python" See the sys-libs/libcap ebuild.
And it's the swig ebuild that builds java support if you have java in your USE flags, if you don't want Java support please add -java to your USE flags.
indeed. user error.