I can definitely chime in on this issue.

A (proper) testcase would be to do something like the following:

# Example item -- this isn't what you'll be using...
CROSS_COMPILE_PREFIX=binos_c3.4.3-p1.mips64-octeon-linux-

AS="${CROSS_COMPILE}as" \
CC="${CROSS_COMPILE}gcc" \
CC="${CROSS_COMPILE}c++" \
LD="${CROSS_COMPILE}ld" \
NM="${CROSS_COMPILE}nm" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
BUILD_PYTHON=/path/to/native/python \
DESTDIR=/where/i/want/to/install/python \
--build=`"${CROSS_COMPILE}gcc" -dumpmachine` \
--host=`arch`

NOTES:
- arch(1) is a GNU specific utility, so it won't work outside of Linux!
- I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to specify the correct
CFLAGS, CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LDLIBS.

Some testcases during the compile that fail if cross-compiling are (with
2.6.1):
- chflags
- lchflags
- printf with %zd format support.

Thanks!