The wildcard handling in portage.keywords is not consistent. An example: tamiko@bluebird ~ % eix -I libkdepim [D] kde-base/libkdepim Available versions: (4.4) 4.4.5 ~4.4.6 4.4.7 4.4.8 4.4.9!t ~4.4.10!t So version 4.4.10 of branch 4.4 has an ~amd64-keyword. It is possible to unmask version 4.4.10 by kde-base/libkdepim ~amd64 kde-base/* ~amd64 */libkdepim ~amd64 */* ~amd64 kde-base/libkdepim::gentoo ~amd64 kde-base/*::gentoo ~amd64 (etc..) in package.keywords so that a # emerge -1p "=kde-base/libkdepim-4.4.10" succeeds. However: kde-base/*:4.5 incorrectly unmasks the package in emerge. (kde-base/libkdepim:4.5 is handled correctly). Furthermore =kde-base/*-4.4.10 is handled as a bad package atom by emerge. app-portage/eix does handle this two cases correctly. (Or differently - whatever the definition of correctly might be ;-) ) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
