Debian vs Gentoo versatility (NOT PERFORMANCE)

[Sami Dalouche <skoobi@free.fr>]

Hi,

As an old debian user, (I recently switched to gentoo)
I really wonder whether debian tries to find a debian-compatible
alternative to gentoo's emerge.
In fact, I recently heard about some-tool-I-don't-remember-the-name that
was supposed to be a viable alternative to gentoo's port system.
But what seems to me is that everybody except gentoo users really see
the point with gentoo : the main advantage, at least for me, is the
presence of USE flags, and not really the fact that you can optimize
your system.
Here's how it works :
the first time you install gentoo, you define a set (that u can change)
of so-called USE flags (plus optimizations).
the USE flags are a uniform set of configure options.
For example, lots of applications have --enable-gnome, or --enable-X,
and --enable-gtk. Well, if you want all three, for all your apps, 
but don't want qt or kde, you define 
USE="X gnome gtk gtk2 -qt -kde".

OK, so now, you could say that it's easy to --configure --help, then
enable/disable the options you want. YES, it is easy, but it's not
consistent. With system-wide USE flags, you just say once for all what u
want, what you don't want, and all your system is consistent. Added to
that, updating is easier, and you can't forget that you activated this
or this option.
This is the main problem of apt-build (or whatever it's called). If you
compile some package by hand, either you block the upgrade (which then
can block some upgrades and is not convenient at all), either you just
let the package management system to care about the update and you lose
your compile options..

So, What I am asking is whether debian tries to do something like this.
Gentoo is cool, it's bleeding edge and stuff, but I'm sure there will be
lots of debian-based binary distributions in the future, so I'd like
debian to be useable too ;)


Sam