On 14 March 2016 at 01:05, Robert Collins <report@bugs.python.org> wrote: > There are three platforms in play: target, host, build. > > Host is the platform where what you build should run on. > build is the platform we are building on. > target is the platform where the *output* of the build thing itself should run on. Baby steps though: lets assume target==host always. To be 100% explicit: CPython doesn't need to worry about the third one, the target platform. That only matters when the thing being compiled, will itself cross-compile/process binaries at runtime e.g. gcc, binutils. So if - I'm on Linux and - I want to compile a gcc that runs on BeOS - that in turn compiles binaries for TempleOS only then would target matter.