This is using sys-apps/portage-2.1_pre7-r5. If I run the command emerge --pretend --verbose --deep --update --newuse world" I see this output: These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating world dependencies ... done! Total size of downloads: 0 kB However, if I run the command emerge --pretend --verbose =dev-perl/XML-Parser-2.34 =media-gfx/gthumb-2.6.8-r2 =media-libs/gd-2.0.32 I get this output: These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies ... done! [ebuild R ] dev-perl/XML-Parser-2.34 USE="-minimal%" 0 kB [ebuild R ] media-gfx/gthumb-2.6.8-r2 USE="exif% jpeg png tiff -debug -gphoto2" 0 kB [ebuild R ] media-libs/gd-2.0.32 USE="jpeg png truetype -fontconfig% -xpm%" 573 kB Total size of downloads: 573 kB Notice the USE flags marked with "%" to indicate they were not used by the most recent emerges of the packages. What is happening here is that these ebuilds have been modified since I emerged them to refer to additional USE flags. If I now toggle the "xpm" USE flag, --newuse does not notice that gd should be re-emerged. The only way I see to solve this is for --newuse to notice these packages and make them candidates for re-emerging (regardless of whether the status of the new USE flags have changed).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 116955 ***