there is not much point for rsync -P. It clutters the logs. Those who have slow links and care about the transferrates can give --verbose somewhere.
Created attachment 83610 [details, diff] portage.progress.patch
Well, I really like seeing some progress so I'm against the removal but I agree it should be switchable (for example being off the you "emerge sync" and on when you "emerge sync -v"). BTW, there's already some tweaking possibe in /etc/make.conf (see /etc/make.conf.example)...
Ha, now I've seen your patch. Looks good to me...
Created attachment 83626 [details, diff] portage.progress.patch -P implies -v. So, just -v per default, and -P when --verbose is passed to emerge. this is what I meant to change.
Finally -v gets a meaning ;) Thanks for the patch, this is rev 3084
Released in 2.1_pre7-r5.