`emerge --depclean` after fresh gnome stage 3 install wants to remove liberation-fonts?

[overkill]

Long time no post!  Got a new machine and installing Funtoo with the gnome stage 3 for Zen2.  All came out well, however, I have a question about the results of `emerge --depclean -a`.  One of the packages it wants to remove is liberation-fonts.  Strange, because that's what Gnome Terminal is set to use by default.  Makes me wonder how many of the other 20 odd programs slated to be removed will impact the system.

I also did a test install on another machine with the gnome haswell stage 3.  Got it installed.  Before running `ego sync` and `emerge world -uDNav` I ran `emerge --depclean -a`.  The results were nearly identical.  Here's the output of the `emerge --depclean -a` on the fully installed amd64 Zen2 gnome stage3 system:

Should I let it rip, or is something amiss here?

tesla ~ # emerge --depclean -a

 * Always study the list of packages to be cleaned for any obvious
 * mistakes. Packages that are part of the world set will always
 * be kept.  They can be manually added to this set with
 * `emerge --noreplace <atom>`.  Packages that are listed in
 * package.provided (see portage(5)) will be removed by
 * depclean, even if they are part of the world set.
 * 
 * As a safety measure, depclean will not remove any packages
 * unless *all* required dependencies have been resolved.  As a
 * consequence of this, it often becomes necessary to run 
 * `emerge --update --newuse --deep @world` prior to depclean.

Calculating dependencies... done!
>>> Calculating removal order...

>>> These are the packages that would be unmerged:

 sys-kernel/debian-sources
    selected: 5.16.7_p2 
   protected: none 
     omitted: 5.16.18_p1 

 dev-perl/Unicode-EastAsianWidth
    selected: 1.330.0-r1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/more-itertools
    selected: 8.10.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/jsonschema
    selected: 3.2.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-perl/Text-Unidecode
    selected: 1.300.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 media-fonts/liberation-fonts
    selected: 2.1.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-perl/libintl-perl
    selected: 1.280.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/more-itertools-compat
    selected: 4.3.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/jsonpointer
    selected: 2.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/webcolors
    selected: 1.8.1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/rfc3986-validator
    selected: 0.1.1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/attrs
    selected: 21.2.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/rfc3339-validator
    selected: 0.1.2 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/pyrsistent
    selected: 0.18.0-r1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/functools32
    selected: 3.2.3 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/zope-interface
    selected: 5.4.0 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/pyrsistent-compat
    selected: 0.16.0-r1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/rfc3987
    selected: 1.3.8 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/strict-rfc3339
    selected: 0.7 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/regex
    selected: 2017.04.05-r1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

 dev-python/namespace-zope
    selected: 1 
   protected: none 
     omitted: none 

All selected packages: =dev-python/rfc3986-validator-0.1.1 =dev-python/pyrsistent-0.18.0-r1 =dev-python/zope-interface-5.4.0 =dev-python/namespace-zope-1 =dev-python/attrs-21.2.0 =dev-python/more-itertools-compat-4.3.0 =dev-python/regex-2017.04.05-r1 =dev-perl/libintl-perl-1.280.0 =dev-python/rfc3987-1.3.8 =dev-python/strict-rfc3339-0.7 =dev-perl/Text-Unidecode-1.300.0 =dev-python/pyrsistent-compat-0.16.0-r1 =sys-kernel/debian-sources-5.16.7_p2 =media-fonts/liberation-fonts-2.1.0 =dev-python/jsonpointer-2.0 =dev-python/functools32-3.2.3 =dev-python/more-itertools-8.10.0 =dev-python/jsonschema-3.2.0 =dev-perl/Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.330.0-r1 =dev-python/webcolors-1.8.1 =dev-python/rfc3339-validator-0.1.2

>>> 'Selected' packages are slated for removal.
>>> 'Protected' and 'omitted' packages will not be removed.

Would you like to unmerge these packages? [Yes/No] 

 

[nrc]

I've found --depclean to be pretty safe as far as not breaking things needed for the system.  Sometimes it will catch something that you use that was pulled in rather than installed specifically.  Pretty easy to fix.

In the case of liberation-fonts, is that really a hard dependency for it to work correctly in the default build, or does it just fall back to an available substitute?   If so, it's a bug that you should report on on the bug tracker.