Tried that only with portage-2.1.4.4, where I hit it while I tried to install portage-2.1.6.7. The selected profile was a 10.0 profile which has >=2.1.6.8 in @system. On IRC dwfreed said it would be still the same with recent portage. The error message was "masked by: profile" and p.unmask didn't help with unmasking it. Took me some time to find the cause. The error should simply be improved (and maybe the handling of such cases too).
I think we should remove "masked by: profile" support since it's not even part of PMS (see section 5.2.7 where is says atoms without * only appear for "legacy reasons"), and profiles can use package.mask if they need to mask something.
If this issue the only one that hides behind "masked by profile", removing it sounds reasonable.
This is fixed in git: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=c5fbe4f306451b62c6f645d8d8679860e2d1a64e I've also migrated the gentoo-x86 profiles to use package.mask: http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/profiles/ChangeLog?view=log#rev1.5605 http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/profiles/ChangeLog?view=log#rev1.5606 http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/profiles/ChangeLog?view=log#rev1.5607
This is fixed in 2.1.10.11 and 2.2.0_alpha51.
