User:Sam/Portage help/Circular dependencies

A circular dependency is where a cycle of packages depend on each other, e.g..

Background
On desktop profiles,  is enabled which is needed for font rendering. But plenty of packages will require  to be enabled on  for rendering.

This causes a circular dependency between and.

The cycle looks like this:
 * 1)   depends on
 * 2)   depends on

Given so many packages need, it must be turned on in almost all situations - but it's frustrating as it's not immediately obvious from the two ebuilds themselves.

Solution
The following works although is a little bit convoluted: