(automake-1.16.info)Cross-Compilation

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2.2.8 Cross-Compilation
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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
actually cross-compile a cross-compiler; such a three-way
cross-compilation is known as a “Canadian cross”.

   Note: Specifying the System Type, for
more information about these ‘configure’ options.