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automake-1.16: Cross-Compilation

 
 2.2.8 Cross-Compilation
 -----------------------
 
 To “cross-compile” is to build on one platform a binary that will run on
 another platform.  When speaking of cross-compilation, it is important
 to distinguish between the “build platform” on which the compilation is
 performed, and the “host platform” on which the resulting executable is
 expected to run.  The following ‘configure’ options are used to specify
 each of them:
 
 ‘--build=BUILD’
      The system on which the package is built.
 ‘--host=HOST’
      The system where built programs and libraries will run.
 
    When the ‘--host’ is used, ‘configure’ will search for the
 cross-compiling suite for this platform.  Cross-compilation tools
 commonly have their target architecture as prefix of their name.  For
 instance my cross-compiler for MinGW32 has its binaries called
 ‘i586-mingw32msvc-gcc’, ‘i586-mingw32msvc-ld’, ‘i586-mingw32msvc-as’,
 etc.
 
    Here is how we could build ‘amhello-1.0’ for ‘i586-mingw32msvc’ on a
 GNU/Linux PC.
 
      ~/amhello-1.0 % ./configure --build i686-pc-linux-gnu --host i586-mingw32msvc
      checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
      checking whether build environment is sane... yes
      checking for gawk... gawk
      checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
      checking for i586-mingw32msvc-strip... i586-mingw32msvc-strip
      checking for i586-mingw32msvc-gcc... i586-mingw32msvc-gcc
      checking for C compiler default output file name... a.exe
      checking whether the C compiler works... yes
      checking whether we are cross compiling... yes
      checking for suffix of executables... .exe
      checking for suffix of object files... o
      checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
      checking whether i586-mingw32msvc-gcc accepts -g... yes
      checking for i586-mingw32msvc-gcc option to accept ANSI C...
      ...
      ~/amhello-1.0 % make
      ...
      ~/amhello-1.0 % cd src; file hello.exe
      hello.exe: MS Windows PE 32-bit Intel 80386 console executable not relocatable
 
    The ‘--host’ and ‘--build’ options are usually all we need for
 cross-compiling.  The only exception is if the package being built is
 itself a cross-compiler: we need a third option to specify its target
 architecture.
 
 ‘--target=TARGET’
      When building compiler tools: the system for which the tools will
      create output.
 
    For instance when installing GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, we can
 use ‘--target=TARGET’ to specify that we want to build GCC as a
 cross-compiler for TARGET.  Mixing ‘--build’ and ‘--target’, we can
 cross-compile a cross-compiler; such a three-way cross-compilation is
 known as a “Canadian cross”.
 
    ⇒Specifying the System Type (autoconf)Specifying Names, for
 more information about these ‘configure’ options.
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