Blair Sadewitz wrote:

> The GNU autotools, in virtue of their design, implicitly assume that
> the host and target are the same.  Despite the fact that you can tell
> it "use my cross-tools", it will do as all too many politicians do and
> act as if it is doing what you want but cannot.  How can the
> autotools--which _execute_ small test programs to make critical
> decisions--produce useful binaries for the target platform by running
> tests on the build host?  It simply cannot.
>
The situation is not that bad. What it does is more like (among other 
things):

- search for symbols in headers (of the target system)
- search for symbols in libraries (with cross tools, so it can "read" the
  target libraries)
- compile programs just for the sake that they compile without error
  (e.g. no undefined symbols), which can be done on the build host
  with the cross compiler

Joachim