If you're going to distribute software, you don't want to build it with macports (because all the linker paths will be absolute and pointing at /opt/local, which is not how you want to distribute anything). Because of this, I don't think crosscompiling is an issue, since when building just for yourself, you don't need the other architecture.
As a note, I once downloaded a program which had just released a new version that used openjade for HTML validation. It didn't work. Why? Because the author had built openjade using MacPorts and bundled it that way. It worked fine on his system, but on anybody else's system it was looking for libraries in /opt/local/lib that simply weren't there. Beware distribution of MacPorts-built binaries.
On Jan 2, 2007, at 10:52 AM, Pau Arumi wrote:
nowadays is very common that osx software is distributed as universal binaries, so i'm quite sure somebody have tried to crosscompile (intel+powerpc) some macports libraries.
i'd need to do that for a handful of libraries, so, before starting my experiments i'd like to hear some previous experiences.
do you think its worth trying it? or is definitely better to use two (intel and powerpc) boxes to produce binaries and then combine them with lipo? [1]