Build for multi-platform

[Colin Sim]

Hi,

We would like our build system (either a dedicated server or development 
machines) to be able to build our system for multiple targets, 
specifically 32-bit and 64-bit variants. Our system has several 
dependancies on third party open source packages.

>From experiments conducted, I know it's possible to build stand-alone 
applications (.exe) for both 32-bit and 64-bit provided the dependencies 
are there. Our preference is to not have both packages for both 32-bit and 
64-bit installed on all development machines.

Is there a way to build the packages without the library dependencies they 
need? That is, is there a way to specify to gcc/g++ or ld, the name of the 
library and symbols it would need without the actual library?

Regards,
Colin