title: Why cross-compiling for ARM fails in ./configure?
body: <p>I know the question is vague, but I didn't quite know how to express what I'm facing here: I'm trying to cross-compile an implementation of Prolog (particularly SWI-Prolog) from the <a href="http://swi-prolog.org/build/unix.html" rel="nofollow">sources</a>. They use the GNU-Autoconf tools (to which I'm a complete beginner) to build the sources, so I supposed I could set the <code>--host</code> and <code>--build</code> triplets to allow for ARM cross-compilation, but it didn't work. This is the command I issued:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ ./configure --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu --host=arm-linux-gnueabi
  
  (... lots of checks ...)
  
  checking for clock_gettime in -lrt... yes
  checking for clock_gettime... yes
  checking for pthread support for cpu clocks... configure: error: in `(...)/pl-6.6.5/src':
  configure: error: cannot run test program while cross compiling
  See `config.log' for more details
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(The complete output is pasted <a href="http://pastebin.com/xfWPG2Bf" rel="nofollow">here</a>)</p>
  
  <p>I've checked the <a href="http://pastebin.com/6Znqs9QT" rel="nofollow"><em>config.log</em> file</a>, but I am unable to understand what's exactly missing. I understand that at this stage, there might be several missing libraries or errors, but I'm unable to understand where to start from. </p>