im setting up gentoo, i have done it several times before so i know what im doing pretty much but something has come up that i wasnt expecting. when running "emerge system" it tries installing a package (sys-apps/help2man-1.29) but it need perl which hasnt been installed yet so it errors and gives up. :s. i then tried installing perl "emerge perl" and i got the same error because sys-apps/help2man-1.29 is the first file on the list of files it needs to download as deps. is this a cock up in the gentoo emerge system or portage ?.

also im setting this up on my server for the first time i have only used it as a desktop. before i emerge system i set the USE flags in /etc/make.conf. am i right to go through the long list and list all the things i want in USE=""?

try removing perl as a use flag, emerge help2man, re-add the perl use flag and you should be ko. apparently.

you don't really need to mess with the use flags too much. personally i just whip out anythign about KDE or QT. there are use flags in /etc/make.globals i think... but you are always able to go back and reemerge if you missed something.

i have removed perl as a use flag, the latest version of perl it tries to install (if you just run emerge perl) is perl-5.8.4-r1 but when installing help2man it says "configure: error: perl 5.005 required" this is really confusing me! i just removed the doc use flag and it seems to be working. sould i include the doc USE flag ?

oh no ive got the same problem it just did a couple of packages before it got to help2man. i have no idea how to get round this problem!

i am trying
to see it that overcomes my problem

that produced an error saying it needed libperl or something so i ran
and now it is happily emergeing the system . i have just seen it emerge help2man so i have fixed it!

sorry i like to finish my threads off so that other people with the same problem can use my old threads as information