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.