When you develop a desktop or server application, almost always the development platform (the machine that runs your compiler) and the target platform (the machine that runs your application) are the same. By “platform” I mean the combination of CPU architecture, and Operating System. The process of building executable binaries on one machine, and run them on another machine when the CPU architecture or the Operating System are different is called “cross compilation”. A special compiler is needed for doing cross compilation that is called “cross compiler“, and sometimes just “toolchain”.

For example, desktop PC application developers for Windows or Linux can build and run their binaries on the very same machine. Even developers of server applications generally have the same basic architecture and Operating System on both their development machine and server machine. The compiler used in these cases is called “native compiler”.

On the other hand, developers of an embedded Linux application that runs on a non PC architecture (like ARM, PowerPC, MIPS, etc.) tend to use a cross compiler to generate executable binaries from source code. The cross compiler must be specifically tailored for doing cross compilation from the development machine’s architecture (sometimes called “host”), to the embedded machine’s architecture (called “target”).

Note: cross compilation is only needed when generating binary executables from source code written in a compiled language, like C or C++. Programs written in interpreted language, like Perl, Python, PHP, or JavaScript, do not need a cross compiler. In most cases interpreted programs should be able run unchanged on any target. You do need, however, a suitable interpreter running on the target machine.