Re: --host versus --target

[Michael Hope <michael dot hope at linaro dot org>]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Trevor Woerner <twoerner@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the crosstool-NG documentation is "5 - Using the toolchain.txt". In
> there it recommends "using the target tuple to tell the build systems
> to use your toolchain" and then gives an example of specifying the
> '--target=tuple' option to 'configure'. Using crosstool-ng-1.13.1 I
> recently built an arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabi toolchain. Looking
> through the log file to see how, for example, strace was built for the
> target I can't help notice --target was not used, only --host. I also
> noticed that for all other tools --host is always specified.
>
> I recently cross-compiled a system and never used --target, only
> --host. Are there any definitive answers on how --target and --host
> differ, or when they're needed (are they both needed, is only one
> required)? I'm surprised my using --host seemed to have worked when
> the documentation recommends --target.

Hi Trevor.  The short answer is for most programs you set host to the
machine the program will run on, such as
--host=arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabi.  For unusual programs like GCC and
GDB where you run the program on x86 but target something else, you
use --host=x86... --target=arm-cortex_a8-linux-gnueabi.

So build==the machine used to build the program, host==the machine the
program runs on, and target==the machine the program works against.

-- Michael

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