https://wiki.debian.org/CrossCompiling https://crossqa.debian.net/
Yeah well this is not quite true. Most embedded distros leverage autotools heavily. In Yocto you just specify autotools as the package class for the recipe and in most cases it will pull, cross compile and package the piece of software for you with no intervention.
The tools are clearly antiquated, written in a questionable taste and 80% of the cases they solve are no longer relevant. They are still very useful for the rest.
Sure, Autotools can do this and that ... given a significantly large and busy crew of downstream packagers who compensate for this and that in their distros.
It's a lame horse that needs to be buried.
The main thing that's wrong with Autotools perhaps is that it is shielded from fixes. Autotools makes a cockery of a project's configuration, and then downstreams concentrate on fixing the cockery to get that project working right. The fixes do not go back to Autotools!
There is already very little feedback between distros and upstream projects. Most of the time distros fix things silently, get things working and never contact upstream. (I've often learned of build issues in my projects by browsing downstream issues and discussions. They do not contact you! I would patch their problem. Then check a month later after a release and yup, "patch no longer applies; upstream fixed this; issue closed").
And now Autotools is one more hop behind upstream! Most people causing problems with Autotools will never be contacted, and those that are will never fix/improve or at least report anything in Autotools. If they do, they will probably just be told they are using Autotools wrong, go away.
Thus the Autotools project is blissfully oblivious to the idea that it might be a problem. Like an elephant in the room that is lying on your sofa, sipping a margarita and watching TV.
Are you sure? I was certain that if the package isn't necessary for build process it is built for target only. Some of the packages on our products are in fact impossible to build for the host which is a pretty good hint.
Cross compilation for distributions is a mess, but it is because of a wide proliferation of build systems, not because of the GNU autotools -- which have probably the most sane way of doing cross compilation out there. E.g., distribution have to figure out why ./configure is not supporting --host cause someone decided on writing their own thing ...
> The main idea behind Autoconf is political. Autoconf based programs are deliberately intended to hinder those who are able to build a program on a non-GNU system and then want to make contributions while just staying on that system, not getting a whole GNU environment.
Nothing could be further from the truth, GNU autoconf started as a bunch of shared ./configure scripts so that programs COULD build on non-GNU system. It is also why GNU autoconf and GNU automake go such far lengths in supporting cross compilation to the point where you can build a compiler that targets one system, runs on another, and was build on a third (Canadian cross compile).
1. Most of the time ./configure won't properly support --host isn't because someone wrote their own thing, but because it's Autoconf.
2. --host is only for compilers and compiler-like tools, or programs which build their own compiler or code generation tools for their own build purposes, which have to run on the build machine rather than the target (or in some cases both). Most programs don't need any indications related to cross compiling because their build systems only build for the target. If a program that needs to build for the build machine has its own conventions for specifying the build machine and target machine toolchains, and those conventions work, that is laudable. Deviating from the conventions dictated by a pile of crap that we should stop using isn't the same thing as "does not work".