configure.build_arch

[Toby Peterson]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 17:21, Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu> wrote:
> --On September 15, 2009 5:18:32 PM -0700 Toby Peterson <toby at macports.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 17:05, Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> --On September 15, 2009 4:01:43 PM -0700 Toby Peterson
>>> <toby at macports.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> For the few ports that actually care, only --build makes any sense.
>>>> We don't support cross-compiling, and very few configure scripts
>>>> get it right anyway.
>>>
>>> I think Jack's point is that in 10.6 on a 32 bit kernel you
>>> effectively are cross-compiling whether you want to or not.  You're
>>> building 64 bit binaries on a system that claims to be a 32 bit
>>> system.  That seems like cross-compiling to me.  Am I
>>> misunderstanding something?
>>
>> As I've noted numerous times now, config.guess still reports i386 on
>> K64, so this perceived problem exists regardless of the kernel
>> architecture.
>
> Ok, that just seems to make the problem worse.  Even after switching to the
> 64 bit kernel you're still cross-compiling, right?

No. From configure's perspective, cross-compiling means building for
an architecture that your build system can't run. A 64-bit Snow
Leopard machine can run x86_64, i386, and ppc (with Rosetta).

Of course, if you actually are cross-compiling then the vast majority
of configure scripts don't work, so you'll need to hack things anyway.
This is why I'm saying that "fixing" the output of config.guess
doesn't really have any practical benefit (for most ports).

- Toby