Merge pull request #106958 from NixOS/doc-cross-compilation-remove-confusing-reexplanation

doc/cross-compilation: Remove confusing re-explanation
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Robert Hensing 2020-12-15 15:57:53 +01:00 committed by GitHub
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@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ A run time dependency between two packages requires that their host platforms ma
A build time dependency, however, has a shift in platforms between the depending package and the depended-on package. "build time dependency" means that to build the depending package we need to be able to run the depended-on's package. The depending package's build platform is therefore equal to the depended-on package's host platform.
If both the dependency and depending packages aren't compilers or other machine-code-producing tools, we're done. And indeed `buildInputs` and `nativeBuildInputs` have covered these simpler build-time and run-time (respectively) changes for many years. But if the dependency does produce machine code, we might need to worry about its target platform too. In principle, that target platform might be any of the depending package's build, host, or target platforms, but we prohibit dependencies from a "later" platform to an earlier platform to limit confusion because we've never seen a legitimate use for them.
If both the dependency and depending packages aren't compilers or other machine-code-producing tools, we're done. And indeed `buildInputs` and `nativeBuildInputs` have covered these simpler cases for many years. But if the dependency does produce machine code, we might need to worry about its target platform too. In principle, that target platform might be any of the depending package's build, host, or target platforms, but we prohibit dependencies from a "later" platform to an earlier platform to limit confusion because we've never seen a legitimate use for them.
Finally, if the depending package is a compiler or other machine-code-producing tool, it might need dependencies that run at "emit time". This is for compilers that (regrettably) insist on being built together with their source languages' standard libraries. Assuming build != host != target, a run-time dependency of the standard library cannot be run at the compiler's build time or run time, but only at the run time of code emitted by the compiler.