RE: : how to not break cross-building

[JohnD]

> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:24:23 +0200
> From: Olaf Till <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: how to not break cross-building
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> In building package documentation, when the package is not yet installed,
> the cleanest way for extracting help strings from C++ code seems to be to
> compile a (minimalistic) binary which outputs this help string. In this
way, all
> special characters in the C-string are treated as they should be.
> 
> This certainly will break cross-building if the cross-compiler is used to
compile
> the minimalistic binary. But any native C-compiler would serve, it only
has to
> evaluate the C-string correctly and call 'printf'. I have no practical
experience
> with cross-building, I only care for it because I know others want to do
it with
> packages. Is there a way to specifiy, in the Makefile, that for a certain
step a
> native compiler should be used, not the cross-compiler?
> 
> Olaf
> 

In the octave sources there is some building of octave-config and mkoctfile
using --enable-cross-tools on configure.ac and src/Makefile.am which might
be a good starting point.
It is effectively setting variable BUILD_CXX/BUILD_CC to gcc (if cross
compiling) or $(CC), and then defining some make rules for compiling a few
specific programs using that compiler.