cross-compile and autotools howto missing

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

ganshengquan wrote:

> Actually, what is going to happen when it is removed? Isn't going to
> break the pkg-config autotools support?

No it isn't. For the *vast* majority of people who are *not* cross
compiling they will see no change in behaviour whatsoever. Full
stop.

For the special (and unusual) case of cross comping read on.

The current behaviour when cross compiling with a <cross-compile>
target is to looks for <cross-compile>-pkg-config first and if
that doesn't exist to use the native pkg-config. However, on any
sensibly set up system, the native pkg-config will get a result
that is 100% wrong and the fact that it is wrong will only be
discovered at the link stage, a long time after the original 
problem.

The new behaviour when cross compiling will be to look for
<cross-compile>-pkg-config and to assume that a program called
pkg-config is the native pkg-config that should be ignored for
the case of cross compiling.

The new behaviour is an improvement because the build will break
earlier and in an obvious way instead of breaking later in a
non-obvious way.

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"If you are going to SCO to license superior driver technology,
 you need to reevaluate your product."
  -- Comment about SUN and SCO on Linuxtoday.com