emerge -k gnome invokes compiler??

[midnightrambler]

I'm a Gentoo newbie (also a bit of a Linux newbie, really) and i'd like to know why gcc is invoked when i call

emerge -k gnome

I did a Gentoo 1.4 GRP Athlon XP install with all packages from CD1 and CD2 installed in /usr/portage/packages ! The "-k" option is supposed to directly install binaries, but it doesn't seem to do so, in fact it took so long that i just canceled the emerge process after waiting for about 10 minutes or so.... i already did "emerge sync" and "fixpackages" beforehand and i also did "emerge -k xfree". xfree apparently installed without compiling...

why doesn't the "-k" option seem to work when calling "emerge -k gnome"?

Thanks in advance
Alex (germany)