Build 32bit on 64 bit Linux using an automake configure script?

Question

I\'m using a 64bit system but want a set of 32bit binaries. What options must I pass to a configure script to generate a 32bit/x86 makefile?

Answer 1

Jack's answer is incomplete.

You need compiler/libc support for 32-bit compilation. In some distros like Ubuntu, what you need to do is install packages gcc-multilib and/or g++-multilib:

sudo apt-get install gcc-multilib g++-multilib

Then you can call configure as you said, specifyiong a 32-bit host and passing 32-bit compilation flags:

./configure --host=i686-linux-gnu "CFLAGS=-m32" "CXXFLAGS=-m32" "LDFLAGS=-m32"

If you do not have multilib installed, you will get an error like configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables when passing the -m32 flag.