Fixing the e2fsprogs com_err ss block on Gentoo

I can't explain in standard written English how much I hate Gentoo. It is by far the lamest distribution of linux out there for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that attempting to upgrade has a tendency to break the whole system. This is the reason that I typically don't update my Gentoo systems unless I have to; this can also be a problem because when you're years behind on package updates more problems tend to crop up and compound each other.

In any event, the most recent problem I've seen is this (now old) block because com_err and ss were merged into the e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs-libs package on Gentoo. Emerge can't handle the block and leaves the user to 'take care of it manually'. Based on what I asked jeeves, this has caused many Gentoo users to break their systems. Here's the process that worked for me (based on http://www.odi.ch/weblog/posting.php?posting=524):

# emerge --fetchonly world
# quickpkg e2fsprogs com_err ss
# emerge -C ss com_err
# emerge -BO linux-headers
# emerge -K linux-headers
# emerge -BO util-linux
# emerge -K util-linux
# emerge -BO e2fsprogs e2fsprogs-libs
# emerge -K e2fsprogs e2fsprogs-libs

In order to upgrade anything else after that, I also had to re-emerge gcc (maybe I didn't, but it worked when I did):

# emerge -v gcc
# gcc-config <profileid>