10.3 Compiling For Multiple Architectures

You can compile Bash for more than one kind of computer at the same time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own directory. To do this, you must use a version of make that supports the VPATH variable, such as GNU make. cd to the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run the configure script from the source directory. You may need to supply the --srcdir=PATH argument to tell configure where the source files are. configure automatically checks for the source code in the directory that configure is in and in ‘..’.

If you have to use a make that does not supports the VPATH variable, you can compile Bash for one architecture at a time in the source code directory. After you have installed Bash for one architecture, use ‘make distclean’ before reconfiguring for another architecture.

Alternatively, if your system supports symbolic links, you can use the support/mkclone script to create a build tree which has symbolic links back to each file in the source directory. Here’s an example that creates a build directory in the current directory from a source directory /usr/gnu/src/bash-2.0:

bash /usr/gnu/src/bash-2.0/support/mkclone -s /usr/gnu/src/bash-2.0 .

The mkclone script requires Bash, so you must have already built Bash for at least one architecture before you can create build directories for other architectures.