Why app-emulation/qemu hard depends on sys-firmware/ipxe?

[fpemud]

sys-firmware/ipxe is network boot (PXE) firmware.
I don't want to install it since I don't need network boot when using qemu,

This is what I found in qemu-10.0.3.ebuild. There's no USE flag to disable sys-firmware/ipxe dependency:

Code: Select all

X86_FIRMWARE_DEPEND="
        pin-upstream-blobs? (
                ~sys-firmware/edk2-bin-${EDK2_OVMF_VERSION}
                ~sys-firmware/ipxe-1.21.1_p20230601[binary,qemu]
                ~sys-firmware/seabios-bin-${SEABIOS_VERSION}
                ~sys-firmware/sgabios-0.1_pre10[binary]
        )
        !pin-upstream-blobs? (
                || (
                        >=sys-firmware/edk2-${EDK2_OVMF_VERSION}
                        >=sys-firmware/edk2-bin-${EDK2_OVMF_VERSION}
                )
                sys-firmware/ipxe[qemu]
                || (
                        >=sys-firmware/seabios-${SEABIOS_VERSION}[seavgabios]
                        >=sys-firmware/seabios-bin-${SEABIOS_VERSION}
                )
                sys-firmware/sgabios
        )
"

Why sys-firmware/ipxe is not optional?

[Hu]

Usually, the answer is "because if you didn't have it, then something would fail." As a first pass, what happens if you install all dependencies except that one, then force Portage to install qemu without dependencies? Does qemu build to completion in that scenario? If yes, can it start a trivial virtual machine in snapshot mode?