According to upstream's NEWS file, lzo is optional since 1.18.4 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/cairo/cairo/-/blob/7fd0cd0a9c0278c2b3d4c78087ca8481087b588b/NEWS#L6
Seems like it was optional before too. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/cairo/cairo/-/merge_requests/590 simply exposed it as a meson switch.
Feel free to attach a patch or make a pull request on github. Looks like lzo is only used for cairo-script, so yeah, probably not often used.
The bug has been closed via the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=189c9e67a7a99091d240ddd42d4b1f3561fcbbfe commit 189c9e67a7a99091d240ddd42d4b1f3561fcbbfe Author: NRK <nrk@disroot.org> AuthorDate: 2025-04-12 09:47:07 +0000 Commit: Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2025-04-23 14:44:14 +0000 x11-libs/cairo: add lzo USE flag Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/953549 Closes: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/41554 Signed-off-by: NRK <nrk@disroot.org> Signed-off-by: Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> x11-libs/cairo/cairo-1.18.4-r1.ebuild | 96 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ x11-libs/cairo/cairo-9999.ebuild | 7 +-- 2 files changed, 100 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)