So I gave a try to cross-compiling gstreamer0.10 and it some interesting issues.
First, I used an i386 chroot instead of an amd64 chroot since I thought that might help a bit with package names; I'm not actually sure that was needed, but it might influence results.
Second, here is how I ran xdeb: % xdeb -a armel --apt-source --only-explicit gstreamer0.10
The first thing which failed here are downloads of biarch libraries for cross import. Currently, xdeb imports binary packages source package by source package (native_import() acts on a source package), and checks for all binary packages of the source package whether they are visible on the build architecture with "apt-cache show <package name>". However a bunch of packages are architecture-specific, so this might miss packages which are only available on the host architecture, and not on the build architecture, and this might try downloading packages which are only available for the build architecture, and hence might fail. The proper fix is to have xdeb look at an APT cache for the build architecture rather than the host one, and filter based on that. This is LP #616617. However I found a workaround by not caring about biarch: - I changed is_crossable() to return False for packages with "lib32" and "lib64" - I changed native_import() to skip (don't download) packages which aren't crossable -- these weren't imported anyway!
This got me to the point where I could install build-deps, I probably fiddled with the blacklist a bit too (I listed gir1.0-glib-2.0 IIRC).
Next, the gstreamer0.10 cross-build started but promptly failed trying to link to libxml2; this was the PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR issue you mentioned. I added: buildpackage.append('-ePKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/%s/lib/pkgconfig' % deb_host_gnu_type)
This is LP #623478 which you filed.
Interestingly, the build broke because it couldn't find gtk-doc anymore; I didn't add /usr/share/pkgconfig, but it does show that host versus build pkg-config dependencies are a problem, and we need a $triplet-pkg-config to solve this!
So I patched the gstreamer build to turn off docs; I think gstreamer0.10 should --disable-gtk-doc when cross-compiling; in fact, this should be done in gtk-doc upstream.
This got quite far in the build: make[4]: Entering directory `/home/lool/gstreamer0.10/gstreamer0.10/gst' [...] libtool: link: arm-linux-gnueabi-ranlib .libs/libgstreamer-0.10.a libtool: link: rm -fr .libs/libgstreamer-0.10.lax libtool: link: ( cd ".libs" && rm -f "libgstreamer-0.10.la" && ln -s "../libgstreamer-0.10.la" "libgstreamer-0.10.la" ) /usr/bin/g-ir-scanner -v --namespace Gst \ --nsversion=0.10 \ -I.. \ -I.. \ -DIN_GOBJECT_INTROSPECTION=1 \ --c-include='gst/gst.h' \ --library=libgstreamer-0.10.la \ --include=GLib-2.0 \ --include=GObject-2.0 \ --include=GModule-2.0 \ --include=libxml2-2.0 \ --libtool="../libtool" \ --pkg glib-2.0 \ --pkg gobject-2.0 \ --pkg gmodule-no-export-2.0 \ --pkg gthread-2.0 \ --pkg libxml-2.0 \ --output Gst-0.10.gir \ ./gst.h ./glib-compat.h ./gstobject.h ./gstbin.h ./gstbuffer.h ./gstbufferlist.h ./gstbus.h ./gstcaps.h ./gstchildproxy.h ./gstclock.h ./gstcompat.h ./gstdebugutils.h ./gstelement.h ./gstelementfactory.h ./gsterror.h ./gstevent.h ./gstfilter.h ./gstformat.h ./gstghostpad.h ./gstindex.h ./gstindexfactory.h ./gstinfo.h ./gstinterface.h ./gstiterator.h ./gstmacros.h ./gstmessage.h ./gstminiobject.h ./gstpad.h ./gstpadtemplate.h ./gstparamspecs.h ./gstpipeline.h ./gstplugin.h ./gstpluginfeature.h ./gstpoll.h ./gstpreset.h ./gstquery.h ./gstsegment.h ./gststructure.h ./gstsystemclock.h ./gsttaglist.h ./gsttagsetter.h ./gsttask.h ./gsttaskpool.h ./gsttrace.h ./gsttypefind.h ./gsttypefindfactory.h ./gsturi.h ./gstutils.h ./gstvalue.h ./gstregistry.h ./gstparse.h ./gstxml.h \ ./gst.c ./gstobject.c ./gstbin.c ./gstbuffer.c ./gstbufferlist.c ./gstbus.c ./gstcaps.c ./gstchildproxy.c ./gstclock.c ./gstdebugutils.c ./gstelement.c ./gstelementfactory.c ./gsterror.c ./gstevent.c ./gstfilter.c ./gstformat.c ./gstghostpad.c ./gstindex.c ./gstindexfactory.c ./gstinfo.c ./gstinterface.c ./gstiterator.c ./gstmessage.c ./gstminiobject.c ./gstpad.c ./gstpadtemplate.c ./gstparamspecs.c ./gstpipeline.c ./gstplugin.c ./gstpluginfeature.c ./gstpluginloader.c ./gstpoll.c ./gstpreset.c ./gstquark.c ./gstquery.c ./gstregistry.c ./gstregistrychunks.c ./gstsegment.c ./gststructure.c ./gstsystemclock.c ./gsttaglist.c ./gsttagsetter.c ./gsttask.c ./gsttaskpool.c ./gsttrace.c ./gsttypefind.c ./gsttypefindfactory.c ./gsturi.c ./gstutils.c ./gstvalue.c ./gstparse.c ./gstregistrybinary.c ./gstxml.c /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabi/4.4.5/../../../../arm-linux-gnueabi/bin/ld: warning: libxml2.so.2, needed by ./.libs/libgstreamer-0.10.so, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link) /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabi/4.4.5/../../../../arm-linux-gnueabi/bin/ld: warning: libm.so.6, needed by ./.libs/libgstreamer-0.10.so, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link) [...] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/g-ir-scanner", line 38, in <module> sys.exit(scanner_main(sys.argv)) File "/usr/lib/gobject-introspection/giscanner/scannermain.py", line 330, in scanner_main glibtransformer.get_get_type_functions()) File "/usr/lib/gobject-introspection/giscanner/dumper.py", line 246, in compile_introspection_binary return dc.run() File "/usr/lib/gobject-introspection/giscanner/dumper.py", line 132, in run self._link(bin_path, o_path) File "/usr/lib/gobject-introspection/giscanner/dumper.py", line 241, in _link subprocess.check_call(args) File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 488, in check_call raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd) subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['../libtool', '--mode=link', '--tag=CC', '--silent', 'arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc', '-o', '/home/lool/gstreamer0.10/gstreamer0.10/gst/tmp-introspectOGdeJg/Gst-0.10', '-g', '-O2', '-g', '-Wall', '-O2', '-Wno-error', '-L.', '-Wl,--export-dynamic', '-pthread', '-L/usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib', '-lgirepository-1.0', '-lgobject-2.0', '-lgmodule-2.0', '-lffi', '-lgthread-2.0', '-lrt', '-lglib-2.0', 'libgstreamer-0.10.la', '-pthread', '-Wl,--export-dynamic', '-L/usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib', '-lgio-2.0', '-lgirepository-1.0', '-lgobject-2.0', '-lgmodule-2.0', '-lffi', '-lgthread-2.0', '-lrt', '-lglib-2.0', '/home/lool/gstreamer0.10/gstreamer0.10/gst/tmp-introspectOGdeJg/Gst-0.10.o']' returned non-zero exit status 1 make[5]: *** [Gst-0.10.gir] Error 1 make[5]: Leaving directory `/home/lool/gstreamer0.10/gstreamer0.10/gst'
So the issue is that g-ir-scanner is broken for cross-builds.
I stopped looking into it at this point
Cheers,