This is an auto-filed bug because sys-fs/diskdev_cmds calls ar directly. The issue was originally discovered on amd64, but it may be reproducible on other arches as well. If you think that a different summary clarifies the issue better, feel free to change it. Attached build log and emerge --info. NOTE: If you think it doesn't make sense fix these type of issues, I'd like to point out that won't be possible use a different AR implementation (like llvm-ar) by setting the AR variable. So this issue has been reproduced by setting the AR variable to x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-ar and by removing the /usr/bin/ar binary.
Created attachment 642456 [details] build.log build log and emerge --info
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=117afaa38e0239aafd03960b7789b5de5bc01789 should add $(AR) propagation and fix this bug.