Current qemu ebuilds cannot be built with python disabled, since ${PYTHON_REQUIRED_USE} and python_setup assume that at least one python target must be enabled.
Created attachment 434572 [details, diff] patch qemu-2.6.0.ebuild to support build with USE=-python This patch makes it work for me.
Hmm, seems that USE=-python gives equivalent results.
python is required to compile, and upstream doesn't make this optional. qemu has a bunch of scripts to generate trace/qapi/etc... files. it isn't used at runtime or RDEPEND-ed afaict. configure: if ! has $python; then error_exit "Python not found. Use --python=/path/to/python" fi