Since a lot of the .ebuilds (all?) use statically encoded path's for ./configure (--prefix, --localstatedir --datadir etc. etc.) I wondered if it would be doable / preferrable to use a variable (in make.conf?) for each of theese so we get consistency across all ebuilds, and reduce the risk of mistakes with the packages getting installed into the "wrong place" . that way all ebuilds per default would have the "right" path. Any packages that need special treatment can go on as before.
I think we have something like this since we have a default ./configure in ebuild.sh. See "econf" in /usr/lib/portage/bin/ebuild.sh