"etcat depends" neither lists packages depending on a given virtual nor packages depending on a virtual that a given package provides. 1. Not listing packages depending on a given virtual: sascha@cube:~$ etcat depends virtual/mta [ Results for search key : virtual/mta ] sascha@cube:~$ mailx-8.1.2.20021129-r3 is installed and depends on virtual/mta: sascha@cube:~$ equery list mail-client/mailx Searching for package 'mailx' in 'mail-client' among: * installed packages [I--] [ ] mail-client/mailx-support-20030215 (0) [I--] [ ] mail-client/mailx-8.1.2.20021129-r3 (0) sascha@cube:~$ grep -A 1 DEPEND /usr/portage/mail-client/mailx/mailx-8.1.2.20021129-r3.ebuild DEPEND=">=net-libs/liblockfile-1.03 virtual/mta sascha@cube:~$ 2. Not listing packages depending on a virtual that a given package provides: sascha@cube:~$ etcat depends mail-mta/qmail [ Results for search key : mail-mta/qmail ] qmail-1.03-r13 is installed and provides virtual/mta: sascha@cube:~$ equery list mail-mta/qmail Searching for package 'qmail' in 'mail-mta' among: * installed packages [I--] [ ] mail-mta/qmail-1.03-r13 (0) sascha@cube:~$ grep PROVIDE /usr/portage/mail-mta/qmail/qmail-1.03-r13.ebuild PROVIDE="virtual/mta mailx-8.1.2.20021129-r3 is installed and depends on virtual/mta (see above).
etcat is deprecated, please use equery instead.
sasha, maybe open a new bug to request the feature for equery