Compiling Qt with the right switches is hard enough, before you throw in cross compiling on top. Since you only need to compile a new Qt release once every few months, why optimize the process? Just kick it off and go to sleep. I don't modify core Qt libraries ever. If I was iterating on Qt itself, I would definitely figure out cross compiling. Anyways if you come up with such a working cross-compile recipe, you should post it some place.