xz-utils is part of system and enough distfiles are xz-compressed that we should have it in stage1 to avoid stage2 dying because someone forgot to add it to DEPEND. Please test this patch by applying it your snapshot cache and building a stage1 and stage2 and confirming that xz-utils is built during stage1. Index: default/linux/packages.build =================================================================== RCS file: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/profiles/default/linux/packages.build,v retrieving revision 1.10 diff -u -B -r1.10 packages.build --- default/linux/packages.build 24 Nov 2012 21:15:48 -0000 1.10 +++ default/linux/packages.build 26 Jul 2013 03:56:45 -0000 @@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ app-arch/bzip2 app-arch/gzip +app-arch/xz-utils app-arch/tar app-shells/bash net-misc/rsync