On the project that requires c++11, USES=compiler:c++11-lang (also compiler:c++11-lib) doesn't make the base c++ compiler (clang-3.8.0) to support c++11. Explicitly adding -std=c++11 to CXXFLAGS does make it c++11. Is this a bug in Uses/compiler.mk that it fails to set the -std=c++11 flag for the compiler that doesn't support c++11? Yuri