perl-cross provides alternative configure script, top-level Makefile as well as some auxilliary files for the standard perl distribution intended to allow cross-compiling perl in a relatively straighforward way.
The configure script from perl-cross is essentially a 100 kB long session of severe sh(1) abuse. Unlike the products of GNU autoconf, it sacrifices portability for readability; it will likely only run on a relatively sane GNU system with GNU binutils (which is kind of expected for a cross-build but still feels like a limitation).
Typical native build:
./configure make make DESTDIR=... install
Typical cross-build for a uclibc system on a Geode board:
./configure --target=i586-pc-linux-uclibc make make DESTDIR=... install
See configure usage page for a complete list of available configure options.
perl can't be cross-compiled "out of the box". You can get an impression it isn't so when you read INSTALL file, but once you start digging deeper (or just trying to do it), you quickly find out that this cross-compilation
Cross-compiling is rarely easy, but in case of perl this was not enough to explain why it is so hard. After all, many autoconf'ed projects allow it much easier. I had no intention to build native toolchain for my Alix project (more for ideological reasons, not due to impossiblity, but that's another question). A close look at config.sh made me sure I'm not going to hand-craft it. CE and other ports were outright target-specific hacks, didn't work too and could not satisfy me anyway. So I started hacking it on my own.
Currently the whole thing works well enough to suite my needs. It's still of alpha quality though; use with caution, and be ready to tweak it (I hope it's tweakable enough).
Alex Suykov <alex.suykov@gmail.com>.
Feel free to ask questions, most of the time I'll try to help.
Several other people contributed patches and suggestions.
If possible, please report successful builds and/or problems you encountered while using perl-cross for your particular platform.