dev-util/dwarves requires the libebl that <=dev-libs/elfutils-0.177 were providing. 0.178 stopped shipping it. I've made https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=79e3104f280697c5bc4a82be366dcfeb2d8a8660 as a stop-gap solution until either dwarves or elfutils is patched. Reproducible: Always
Starting from 0.178 libebl is a part of libdw library: https://sourceware.org/git/?p=elfutils.git;a=commitdiff;h=b833c731359af12af9f16bcb621b3cdc170eafbc dwarves will have to adapt unless elfutils also merged libraries incorrectly.
Upstream's cmake should not be hard to tweak to check actually needed symbols instead of check library presence: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/pahole/pahole.git/tree/cmake/modules/FindDWARF.cmake#n40
Jason A. Donenfeld resolved this issue in commit 4580d02134f001d96c73d15ac51f6abc4d0f50dd / dwarves-1.16-r1. The added patch was meanwhile also applied in upstream git.
Posting upstream patch here for posterity: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/pahole/pahole.git/commit/cmake/modules/FindDWARF.cmake?id=de84ae36c7388f8d124fbe39b8073ab72021ad48