diff --git a/BuildCVS.txt b/BuildCVS.txt
index 4940ee0c5e..0feea2c139 100644
--- a/BuildCVS.txt
+++ b/BuildCVS.txt
@@ -129,15 +129,19 @@ sure that your configure setup is basically sound.)
 
 To cross compile the windows library, do
 -> cd win32
+Now run configure. There are two ways to do this
+-> ../configure --host=i586-mingw32 --build=i586-linux --with-mingw \
+   --enable-dnd=no
+where --build= should read whatever platform you're building on. Configure
+will notice that build and host platforms differ, and automatically prepend
+i586-mingw32- to gcc, ar, ld, etc (make sure they're in the PATH!). 
+The other way to run configure is by specifying the names of the binaries 
+yourself:
 -> CC=i586-mingw32-gcc CXX=i586-mingw32-g++ RANLIB=i586-mingw32-ranlib \
    DLLTOOL=i586-mingw32-dlltool LD=i586-mingw32-ld NM=i586-mingw32-nm \
    ../configure --host=i586-mingw32 --with-mingw --enable-dnd=no
 
-(assuming you're using mingw32)
-
-The important thing to notice here is that we suply configure with the names
-of all the non-default binutils (make sure they're in the PATH!), and that 
-we tell configure to build for the host platform i586-mingw32. 
+(all assuming you're using mingw32)
 Drag'n'drop is disabled because mingw32 lacks (AFAIK) OLE headers.
 
 Configure will conclude that shared libraries are out of the question and
@@ -170,3 +174,4 @@ default wx resources into libwx_msw.a?) [ No we can't; the linker won't
 link it in... you have to supply an object file ]
 - dynamic libraries
 - static executables are HUGE -- there must be room for improvement.
+
diff --git a/configure.in b/configure.in
index b5519d4ba5..5a99554399 100644
--- a/configure.in
+++ b/configure.in
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ dnl ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 dnl the file passed to AC_INIT should be specific to our package
 AC_INIT(wx-config.in)
 
-AC_CANONICAL_HOST
+AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM
 
 dnl When making releases do:
 dnl
@@ -770,11 +770,15 @@ AC_CACHE_SAVE
 dnl cross-compiling support: we're cross compiling if the build system is
 dnl different from the target one (assume host and target be always the same)
 if eval "test $host != $build"; then
-  if eval "test $build != NONE"; then
-    CC="$build-gcc"
-    CXX="$build-g++"
-    RANLIB="$build-ranlib"
-    NM="$build-nm"
+  if eval "test $host_alias != NONE"; then
+    CC=$host_alias-gcc 
+    CXX=$host_alias-c++ 
+    AR=$host_alias-ar
+    RANLIB=$host_alias-ranlib
+    DLLTOOL=$host_alias-dlltool 
+    LD=$host_alias-ld 
+    NM=$host_alias-nm
+    STRIP=$host_alias-strip
   fi
 fi