While `raco exe` in v8.1 very nearly supports cross-builds of Racket executables[*], it's not easy to pass the right flags and set up the needed target-platform distributions.
The `raco cross` command provided by the new "raco-cross" package wraps Racket tools to simplify all of that management. For example, raco cross --target x86_64-linux --vm bc exe example.rkt is like running raco exe example.rkt but it cross-builds for x86_64 Linux. That build process involves downloading a minimal racket tarball for the target platform, installing "compiler-lib" there, downloading a matching minimal build of Racket for the host platform, and then running the host Racket in cross-build mode with installed target distribution --- but, again, `raco cross` takes care of all that. Just like using `raco exe` on Linux, the generated executable won't actually work on other machines until you package it in a distribution using `raco dist`: raco cross --target x86_64-linux --vm bc dist example-dist example Naturally, this second invocation of `raco cross` for the same target uses the installations prepared by the first `raco cross`, so it's relatively fast. I expect that `raco cross` will become more useful after the v8.2 release, which will repair cross-compilation for CS executables and executables with native libraries (like GUI executables). Meanwhile, it's possible to use `raco cross` with snapshot builds, but you have to point it at a snapshot site; see the documentation for more information. Because juggling multiple installations and versions is a lot of the work for cross-compilation, `raco cross` can also be a way to get to a different version of Racket in minimal form. For example, raco cross --version 8.0 racket starts a Racket v8.0 prompt. (The `racket` command is treated specially by `raco cross`. All other commands are prefixed by `raco`.) For more information see https://docs.racket-lang.org/raco-cross/index.html [*] Running a cross-built CS executable fails at the very last step of startup, and that's due to an expander bug for handling top-level `begin` forms compiled in machine-independent form. We didn't detect this problem before, because it wasn't part of Bogdan's use case for cross builds, and because cross-compilation was painful enough that we didn't actually try other cases. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/20210513095436.31b%40sirmail.smtps.cs.utah.edu.
