Claire Xen  🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈 🧙🏻‍♀️ BLM  🏴 🚩

HEY

it's just that, like, I don't feel like there's any fundamental reason for them to cause as much suffering as they invariably cause

As someone who has worked in embedded and is currently working on RISC-V I have to disagree vehemently. Also: Most of the troubles with cross compilers have nothing to do with the compilers but with libraries and stuff like lib paths. Fuck those! -ffreestanding -nostdlib :)

I don't find that they cause much suffering unless people expect to just pull in random dependencies from all over (eg, packages installed on their build machine, rather than third-party code vendored into their source tree). If you manage your whole build tree, life is saner.

Mind you, it's work, but it's worth it. Some of this comes from a background of building-the-whole-OS and wanting or needing to know where exactly every bit of source comes from and keep track of it. YMMV, I suppose.

IME most cross-compiler related pain is caused by a) compilers that aren't always cross-compiling (*cough*GCC) and b) awful homegrown buildsystems

The worst experience I ever had was trying to cross-build for x86-64 ("embedded") from x86-64 (linux) and jumping through hoops to ensure the compiler didn't start slurping in headers/libraries from the host system. When host/target are different archs it's harder to mess up.

I find packages that insist on using autoconf most annoying, because, seriously, I am not going to cross-build by running a target system in emulation and building there and I don't think I need a full hand to count the number of times cross-configure has ever worked correctly.