With portage-2.0.17 I was having problems pulling the proper version of scrollkeeper, it was not finding 0.3.10-r1 even though was keyworded and not masked (there was an error in the current cvs version of the scrollkeeper build, 2 sets of unmatched KEYWORDS). I fixed this error, and did rm -rf /var/cache/edb/dep/* , still no luck seeing the new build. I commeneted line in package.mask with gnome-base/scrollkeeper, and I could then see the newest build. Commenting this line in packages.mask again and it still let me see newest build. Cache wierdness?
OK, this is due to a logic error in the xcache code. I'm removing the xcache for now and will revisit it later. Should be totally fixed in portage 2.0.18.