[gentoo-dev] emerge world taking excessive CPU/real time

[Robert Bradbury]

I commonly run:
  emerge --pretend --update --verbose --deep --newuse world
at least once every day to provide a list of recently updated packages that
I need to re-emerge.

I've noticed recently (in the last 1-2 weeks) that it seems to be taking a
very long time.  The one I've got running now has on the order of 8+ CPU
minutes which seems very long.  I think this used to take <2 minutes.

I've also noticed some chatter on the gentoo-dev list about including
package dates in the portage database.

Has anyone else encountered this problem or have any ideas about the
possible cause?  Could it be python version related?

Versions are: portage-2.1.7.1 and Python 2.6.3 (r263:75183, Oct  3 2009,
02:52:55).

Thanks,
Robert