Sebastian Beßler posted on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:22:19 +0200 as excerpted:

> to enable xinerama-support I want to rebuild mplayer but it hangs at
> 
> Checking for ALSA audio ... yes (using alsa 1.0.x and alsa/asoundlib.h)
> Checking for Sun audio ... no
> Checking for VCD support ... yes
> Checking for dvdread ... yes (internal) Checking for internal libdvdcss
> ... yes Checking for cdparanoia ... no Checking for libcdio ... yes
> Checking for bitmap font support ... yes Checking for freetype >= 2.0.9
> ... ^C
> 
> and nothing goes.
> I tried it over the last few days a few times and always cut it after 3h
> or so.
> 
> I can install and update other programms without problems. Only mplayer
> shows this effect, I tried all ebuilds of mplayer amd64 and ~amd64 but
> the effect is everytime the same.

A quick bug-check says it's a known issue, related to a conflict between 
the portage sandbox and openal.  USE=-openal works for many, if you don't 
specifically need openal, of course, otherwise, consider FEATURES=-
sandbox (which is a bit safer if you run FEATURES=userpriv).

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286866
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286866

You may wish to CC yourself to that bug.

FWIW I seem to have missed the bug as emerge --pretend mplayer says I 
have USE=-openal (which euse -i says is open audio library, but that's 
about all I know about it).

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman