Thanks to those who responded for the suggestions. I didn't think I sent this same message a second time. If I did, it was accidental.
Using equery and other portage commands may be better than looking directly at /var/db/pkg/<category>/<package-name>, sort of like the new pkgng in FreeBSD which is taking over from the older format. I come from a Linux distribution (Slackware) whose package management knows nothing about dependencies. Tom
