And... does it make sense to you... when you're not cross compiling?

The point is that it objectively CAN compile to the right target. The capability is not broken.

It however DOESNT due to a configuration bug. Therefore it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s clearly not intentional.

your sentence saying “it can’t build” is therefore incorrect. It’s the distinction between the two capitalized words above.

If "clang helloworld.c" doesn't produce a working a.out out of the box, I think it's fair to say builds are broken. Plenty of projects won't build in those circumstances without some assistance.

Again, that’s not the point. I’m not sure how much clearer this can be made:

1. Nobody is saying it’s not a bad situation. Everyone agrees that it’s non ideal.

2. People who are saying that it can’t produce a usable build are wrong, because it absolutely can produce a usable build with the arch flag explicitly provided.

3. People are conflating a bad default with the inability to do something.

It honestly feels like people are substituting their own sentences in and then arguing against a point that isn’t being made.