I'm trying to document the right way to cross-compile applications which use autoconf/automake. configure has a --target flag, but I can't see how to get it to do anything useful.
The goat book has what looks like a helpful section http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_261.html#SEC261 which talks about the macros AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM and AC_ARG_PROGRAM, but it turns out this only affects tool names *when installing*. It's useful when *building* cross compilers, not when using them. My best guess at the moment is: Before running 'configure', set the environment variables CC, CXX, RANLIB, and AR to point to the cross-development tools you want to use, *and* tell configure the target name, e.g. CC=powerpc-linux-gcc CXX=powerpc-linux-g++ RANLIB=powerpc-linux-ranlib AR=powerpc-linux-ar ./configure --target=powerpc-linux Is this right? If so, this is suprisingly clumsy. I would expect configure to let you set both the target name and the tool names in one fell swoop, e.g. ./configure --with-target=powerpc-linux but since few people do cross-development, maybe this hasn't been made easy. - Dan (originally posted to gnu.gcc.help, but no response there) ** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
