configure.info: Canadian Cross Concepts

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Canadian Cross Concepts

   When building a Canadian Cross, there are at least two different
systems involved: the system on which the tools are being built, and
the system on which the tools will run.
   The system on which the tools are being built is called the "build"
system.
   The system on which the tools will run is called the host system.
   For example, if you are building a Solaris program on a GNU/Linux
system, as in the previous section, the build system would be GNU/Linux,
and the host system would be Solaris.
   It is, of course, possible to build a cross compiler using a Canadian
Cross (i.e., build a cross compiler using a cross compiler).  In this
case, the system for which the resulting cross compiler generates code
is called the target system.  (For a more complete discussion of host
and target systems, *note Host and Target::).
   An example of building a cross compiler using a Canadian Cross would
be building a Windows cross MIPS ELF compiler on a GNU/Linux system.  In
this case the build system would be GNU/Linux, the host system would be
Windows, and the target system would be MIPS ELF.
   The name Canadian Cross comes from the case when the build, host, and
target systems are all different.  At the time that these issues were
all being hashed out, Canada had three national political parties.