Getting cross compilation to work.

[Per Buer]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 9:59 PM Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
wrote:

> --------
> Per Buer writes:
>
> > There is sysconf(_SC_THREAD_STACK_MIN) and MCF_ParamConf("thread_pools",
> > "%d", MAX_THREAD_POOLS) which will affect params.rst will end up looking.
>
> So this is where it gets interesting.
>
> By definition the documentation cannot contain correct numerical
> values (min/max/default) for "dynamic" parameters.
>
> I know we stick 'examplary' numbers in the docs today, but that's
> more by accident of implementation than by intention.
>

Right.

One could argue there is a point in building man pages for a specific arch,
but I'd rather there be just a single version of each man page and that the
man pages
match what is one the web.

If I were starting over, I think I would prefer the doc to say
> "determined at runtime" rather than contain numbers which may or
> may not have anything to do with reality.
>

That is a reasonable stance. I agree.

Finally, of course, I think there are a parameters which serve
> no actual purpose (any longer) and can & ahould be removed.

> So, autoconf has CC_FOR_BUILD, [...]
>
> I'm really not keen on wading deeper into the autocrap sump if we
> can avoid it.
>

Reasonable. I got the CC trampoline it running last night, but autoconf's
default error handling is pretty lame. You'll ask it for a cross-compile,
it won't find the cross-compiler, and it will do a native compile
instead, pretending everything is fine. You explicitly have to set up an
assertion
if you wanna be certain.

We can't avoid that bit however, as we're already using it.

The CC_FOR_BUILD stuff is pretty nice, actually. But having the
docs be uniform is actually a better goal.


As to 32 bit:
>
> Yeah, those days have come and gone, and if I recall right we have
> already announced that 32bit would not be supported in this major
> release, and then, as we often do, forgot to actually remove it.
>
> Maybe we should start out with a "spring cleaning" and ditch
> 32bit for good and audit the parameters for any which are
> surplus to requirements.
>

ok. Let's keep the scope somewhat limited, though. I'm not comfortable
doing the audit, atm.

PS: You have still not revealed why cross-building is important/desirable ?
>

Someone complained to me about the build system, so, I thought I'd have a
look.

ARM on the server-side is becoming increasingly important. It would be nice
to
not have to find ARM hardware or spin up QEMU to build ARM packages.

Also, I find the current setup somewhat offensive. Pretty clever, though.

-- 
Per Buer
Varnish Software
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