Bug 8409

"* make sure mesa actually provides libGL even on systems without x11" doesn't make any sense - libGL.so is explicitly bound to libX11 (its the GLX API).

Are you sure that qemu won't do VNC/SPICE when SDL is disabled?  I'm sure I've ran it headless with a VNC connection in the past.

Qemu doesn't need X11 nor SDL for VNC to work:

$ runqemu qemux86
[...]
VNC server running on `::1:5900'

$ ldd /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/qemu-system-i386
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffef3297000)
	libz.so.1 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libz.so.1 (0x00007f4557f17000)
	libpixman-1.so.0 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libpixman-1.so.0 (0x00007f4557c6c000)
	libutil.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libutil.so.1 (0x00007f4557a69000)
	libasound.so.2 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libasound.so.2 (0x00007f4557770000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f455756c000)
	libfdt.so.1 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libfdt.so.1 (0x00007f4557366000)
	libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f4557165000)
	libglib-2.0.so.0 => /data/poky-master/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/../lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f4556e2d000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f4556c25000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f455691a000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f4556619000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f4556403000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f45561e6000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f4555e3d000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f4558d41000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f4555c39000)

libSDL will only depend on GL if your distro wants OpenGL, so you should probably remove "opengl" from DISTRO_EFATURES too.  Removing "sdl" from qemu's PACKAGECONFIG will stop it linking to SDL at all.

If you remove opengl and x11 from DISTRO_FEATURES then qemu will happily build without any other intervention.  It links to SDL which isn't ideal but maybe you'll end up with some awesome ascii-rendered virtual machine.

In fact, this must be fixed in master already and is specific to 1.8 as I just removed x11 from DISTRO_FEATURES and qemu builds fine.

Marking as a potential 1.8.1 (impact needs to be reviewed) and assigning to the 1.8 maintainer.

Thanks everyone for having a deeper look at the issue!
The intention is indeed to use qemu with libvirt headless with VMs providing only ASCII output, if any.
I didn't verify dependencies of SPICE/VNC because we don't use them, just mentioned them because that was the only thing which came into my mind what one could potentially use SDL or libGLU for on a headless system. If that doesn't require linking against libGLU, even better.
We got neither 'opengl' nor 'x11' set in DISTRO_EFATURES, however, adding both, 'x11' and 'opengl' to DISTRO_FEATURES is the current work-around leading to a successful qemu build based on poky-1.8.

On the latest fido branch and x11 and opengl removed from DISTRO_FEATURES with the following in my local.conf:
    DISTRO_FEATURES_remove = "opengl x11"

I am able to build qemu (tested with a qemux86 MACHINE).

If this issue persists could you please provide steps for reproduction?

Closing as nobody else can replicate and the reporter hasn't provided any further feedback.

Daniel, if you can still replicate this, please reopen and provide more details.