But! As I understand, 'cross compiling' Perl means the following, using some custom autotools configure settings: 1. build 'miniperl' in the target architecture (in my case, for iOS that would be arm64 for devices, and arm64 or x86_64 for the simulator that runs on macOS) 2 Miniperl will build the actual library (.a file), and is expected to do so on the target device.

I believe your understanding of cross-compiling is flawed. What it actually means is that you compile code for a target that's different than the native architecture. For example, I wrote C on a VAX 11/780 that was cross-compiled to 68000 assembler, and then downloaded to the target system (yeah, OK, it was the early 80's).

If you're compiling on the local system for use on that system .. that's not cross-compiling.

I imagine that there are tools that will cross-compile for iOS on other architectures -- then all you need to do is to load that executable on the target system, possibly by creating an iOS app. I don't actually know about any of this -- I'm just hand-waving at this point.