Well, I don't have much experience cross-compiling (just the few small things for the empeg and a couple for the TiVo), but I have a theory. Maybe it's a warning generated by the test that configure is trying to compile. When it runs through all its test, maybe there's a flag in the ones for the char codings that says not to cross-compile that test, but doesn't impact the package as a whole... that's my *guess* anyway.

I ran ./configure --host=arm-empeg-linux (for some reason it couldn't auto-detect the cross-compiler). Make just finished (didn't error out)... but I don't know what I'm looking for... did it really cross-compile? How do I tell? Is there a binary I can try running on the empeg or is it just a library?