In native builds, qemu can fail to find zlib development files in the native sysroot and the build machine might not have zlib-dev packages installed. Add CFLAGS to qemu's CFLAGS which in the native case means BUILD_CFLAGS are added and files in the sysroot can be found. Patch from Paul Eggleton, Comments by RP 28/11/10 Index: qemu-0.13.0/configure =================================================================== --- qemu-0.13.0.orig/configure 2010-10-16 04:56:09.000000000 +0800 +++ qemu-0.13.0/configure 2011-01-15 18:19:41.000000000 +0800 @@ -134,6 +134,7 @@ QEMU_CFLAGS="-D_GNU_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE $QEMU_CFLAGS" QEMU_CFLAGS="-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 $QEMU_CFLAGS" QEMU_CFLAGS="-I. -I\$(SRC_PATH) $QEMU_CFLAGS" +QEMU_CFLAGS="$QEMU_CFLAGS $CFLAGS" LDFLAGS="-g $LDFLAGS" gcc_flags="-Wold-style-declaration -Wold-style-definition -fstack-protector-all"