Apparently, when you emerge a package of a certain type, portage automatically activates particular USE flags. Here's some background information on how I happened to stumble upon this problem. I emerged sun-jre-bin and I notice that emerge --pretend --verbose --newuse world had java* listed as a USE flag. This, in turn, causes some unwanted behavior, such as db wanting blackdown-jdk emerged, etc. The more things I emerge, the fatter my package list is going to get with unwanted java apps. Now, I don't have java listed as a USE flag anywhere in /etc/make.conf, /etc/make.globals, or /etc/make.profile/make.defaults. It is, however, listed as a USE flag when emerge info is issued. I could just add -java in make.conf, but I don't particularly want to. If an ebuild wants certain java apps as dependencies, I don't mind. The more optional java dependencies I could do without, though. So, unhappy with the situation, I go to #gentoo-portage and try to find out what's up. That's where ferringb informs me that portage will sometimes flip on certain USE flags when certain packages are emerged. Fit my problem to a T. I became even more unhappy; unhappy enough to fill out this very bug report. Basically, I'm wanting this "feature" out of portage. I put what I wanted for USE flags in make.conf, so why does portage feel that it's necessary to override my wishes? Aren't I supposed to have final say over things like this? I certainly think I should. Right or wrong, portage shouldn't be imposing its choices on me. Hopefully, the portage crew can make the removal of auto-flipping happen. I also would love to hear the reasoning for this being here in the first place as well.
There are two alternatives do that which you want. USE="-* ..." in make.conf or USE_ORDER="env:pkg:conf:defaults" The second is not documented but does exactly what you want. The first one is the better option and could be created by doing "emerge info | grep USE >> /etc/make.conf" and then removing any specific flags, such as java, that you don't want. Note, I'm all for getting rid of autouse but that's just because it's horrible to implement design-wise. ;)
