[tlug] Looking for advice on the best way to rebuild a gentoo box

["Zev Blut" <zb@example.com>]

Hello,

Recently I have had a number of blocking updates and other annoying
masking issues with my Gentoo box when attempting to update various
parts of the system or world.  Most recently being the whole
java-config-1 and java-config-2 stuff, plus various Gnome
dependencies. This machine has been through a number of updates and
USE changes and such for at least over a year and a half.  I would
like to reduce down time as much as possible, so before I decide to
rebuild from scratch I would like to know if any of you have some good
strategies for rebuilding your system.

I am tempted to try doing a :

emerge -Duave world

But, I might not do it if it is going to only partially fix things and
leave some old cruft that might come back to bite me later.  Running
revdep-rebuild currently fails and the work to get it running again
may be better spent with a clean install.  I am seriously considering
doing a fresh install and seeing how long I can go with add a USE flag
of "-gnome".

My google-foo has failed me on this task, so if you have any links or
recommendations I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Zev