Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 23:42:50 +0100, Ashley Dixon wrote:
>
>> Providing he's just adding the line to a package.use file with  a  text
>>  editor, that's just manually doing the work of etc-update.  We need
>> the  `emerge  --info docutils` output to see full information about his
>> Python environment.
> Except that etc-update also adds a backtrace as comments, allowing him to
> trace the cause.
>
>

That backtrace is in the OP's original post.  The first one doesn't give
much of one, none really.  The second one gives a list of packages. 
Either way, it was a circular problem.  It seems the emerge --info for
the package gave the clue which I don't see anywhere in the output of
emerge. 

Dale

:-)  :-)