While `raco exe` in v8.1 very nearly supports cross-builds of Racket executables[*], it's not easy to pass the right flags and set up the needed target-platform distributions.
The `raco cross` command provided by the new "raco-cross" package wraps Racket tools to simplify all of that management. For example, raco cross --target x86_64-linux --vm bc exe example.rkt is like running raco exe example.rkt but it cross-builds for x86_64 Linux. That build process involves downloading a minimal racket tarball for the target platform, installing "compiler-lib" there, downloading a matching minimal build of Racket for the host platform, and then running the host Racket in cross-build mode with installed target distribution --- but, again, `raco cross` takes care of all that. Just like using `raco exe` on Linux, the generated executable won't actually work on other machines until you package it in a distribution using `raco dist`: raco cross --target x86_64-linux --vm bc dist example-dist example Naturally, this second invocation of `raco cross` for the same target uses the installations prepared by the first `raco cross`, so it's relatively fast. I expect that `raco cross` will become more useful after the v8.2 release, which will repair cross-compilation for CS executables and executables with native libraries (like GUI executables). Meanwhile, it's possible to use `raco cross` with snapshot builds, but you have to point it at a snapshot site; see the documentation for more information. Because juggling multiple installations and versions is a lot of the work for cross-compilation, `raco cross` can also be a way to get to a different version of Racket in minimal form. For example, raco cross --version 8.0 racket starts a Racket v8.0 prompt. (The `racket` command is treated specially by `raco cross`. All other commands are prefixed by `raco`.) For more information see https://docs.racket-lang.org/raco-cross/index.html [*] Running a cross-built CS executable fails at the very last step of startup, and that's due to an expander bug for handling top-level `begin` forms compiled in machine-independent form. We didn't detect this problem before, because it wasn't part of Bogdan's use case for cross builds, and because cross-compilation was painful enough that we didn't actually try other cases. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/20210513095436.31b%40sirmail.smtps.cs.utah.edu.
