26.4.1 Canadian Cross Example
We'll start with an example of a Canadian Cross, to make sure that the
concepts are clear. Using a GNU/Linux system, you can build a
program which will run on a Solaris system. You would use a
GNU/Linux cross Solaris compiler to build the program. You could
not run the resulting programs on your GNU/Linux system. After
all, they are Solaris programs. Instead, you would have to copy the
result over to a Solaris system before you could run it.
Naturally, you could simply build the program on the Solaris system in
the first place. However, perhaps the Solaris system is not available
for some reason; perhaps you don't actually have one, but you want to
build the tools for somebody else to use. Or perhaps your GNU/Linux
system is much faster than your Solaris system.
A Canadian Cross build is most frequently used when building programs to
run on a non-Unix system, such as DOS or Windows. It may be simpler to
configure and build on a Unix system than to support the GNU Autotools
tools on a non-Unix system.
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