On Saturday 07 Dec 2013 10:31:38 you wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Dec 2013 10:16:43 +0000
> 
> Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why is gnome-base suddenly necessary on my system?  Is it
> > media-plugins/gst- plugins-gconf that wants to pull it in this
> > morning, when it hadn't done so before?
> > 
> > This is what I see, but I also include the full enchilada below in
> > case it is more informative:
> > 
> > [nomerge       ]  media-plugins/gst-plugins-gconf-0.10.31:0.10
> > [ebuild     U  ]   gnome-base/gconf-3.2.6-r1:2 [2.32.4-r1:2]
> 
> Note how there is "gconf" in
> "media-plugins/gst-plugins-gconf-0.10.31:0.10"; thus, you don't want
> this so I suggest you to add "gnome-base/gconf" and
> "media-plugins/gst-plugins-gconf" to package.mask. By doing so, you
> will be warned when something depends on it in the future.
> 
> In this case you will find that net-im/pidgin[gstreamer] depends on it;
> thus, you will want to disable that USE flag on net-im/pidgin.

Thanks Tom!

It used to be the case that setting -gnome globally would be sufficient, 
without having to manually mask packages.  I had gstreamer in pidgin to be 
able to get sound.  I'm guessing that I need gstreamer in pidgin to be able to 
set up a voice call in gtalk.

Is it the case that now one has to install gnome-base to be able to use 
gstreamer?
-- 
Regards,
Mick