genkernel is extremely talkative (more than what fits in 80x25). If something is explicitly configured different than what the authors once considered the wisest way of doing things (which is actually hugely unclever in many cases), it would tell you, and in no way with brevity. It has a bag full of heuristics making it behave completely different depending on the situation it finds existing; what config it uses and the state it leaves the kernel directory afterwards is completely undefined. That tool is an example on how not to do things, it’s super-fragile. The tool should tell in clear short words, ideally printed out as table, what state it found existing, where it gets the kernel config from, what exactly it will do and in what state it leaves the kernel directory and what it places in /boot. No storytelling, no expression of disappointment over changed genkernel config, no lamenting over set command-line options, no announcement of falsely detected version numbers. Reproducible: Always
While I actually agree quite a bit with your frustration, and it's why I think genkernel should either go away or receive a significant revamp, a rant does not make a good bug report and should ideally be about one actionable issue. But I suppose the output issue is quite related to the rat's nest of heuristics in that the output exists partly because of it. Really, genkernel needs a new maintainer and for someone to make some opinionated decisions (perhaps you!).
Let me know why you build the kernel with genkernel instead of using dist-kernel. For example, I use it only for compiling initrd image: USE="-initramfs" emerge gentoo-kernel genkernel ramdisk
