More info: Binary built on different platforms with exact same tools different?

[Kaz Kylheku]

From: "Rick Mann" <rmann@latencyzero.com>
> On Dec 17, 2007, at 4:59 PM, NightStrike wrote:
>
>> Why would binaries on different platforms be identical?
>
> The toolchain on each host platform is built with identical steps,  from 
> the same source distro, targetting an embedded Xscale processor.
>
> The source code does not use any OS APIs, just some things in newlib 
> (built as part of the toolchain).

So you might think.

However, it's easy for code to become polluted by stuff from the build 
machine.

I knows this from experience, having developed a cross-compiled Linux 
distribution from scratch.

In one case I had a failure because some /usr/include header got included, 
and as a result, inline asm's routines for x86 were being mixed into MIPS 
code.

Make sure your GCC is properly sysrooted so it's not picking up local header 
files, etc.

> The resulting binary should, in theory, be identical, regardless of  the 
> host platform.

And of course the input to the compiler after all header file inclusion and 
preprocessing should also be the same.

Here is something to try: compile your code with -E in both environments to 
capture the raw preprocessor output. You don't want any differences there, 
that's for sure.