Marzan, Richard non Unisys skrev:
> How can I disable portage dropping or overriding my MAKEOPTS variable 
> setting when building certain programs?
> 

Isn't that self defeating, when an ebuild contains enforced -j1 it's 
because the program can't compile with -j2 or higher. The makefile is 
written badly and doesn't provide make with the needed information to
safely create the execution path. Fx. making a library other parts of 
the code use is not blocking compilation of all files depending on this 
internal library.

Or my personal favorite:
create somefile
mv somefile someplace/somefile
mv someplace/somefile someotherplace/somefile

Dunno why someone needs to move a file twice in a row... but some make 
files does things like this.

But sure go ahead and make custom ebuilds without the make -j1.