That hasn't been my experience at all. Cross-compiling anything on Rust was an unimaginable pain (3 years or so ago). While GCCs approach of having different binaries with different targets does have its issues, cross compiling just works.

Ah sorry. I should clarify. Not referring to specifically cross compiling; just general compiling. In rust weather PC or embedded, I run Cargo run. For C or C++, it's who knows. A provincial set of steps for each project, error messages, makes me get frustrated. I keep a set of notes for each one I touch to supplement the project's own docs. I am maybe too dumb or inexperienced in some cases, but I am having a hard time understanding why someone would design that as the UX.

I want to focus on the project itself; not jump through hoops in the build process. It feels hostile.

For cross compiling to ARM from a PC in rust in particular, you do one CLI cmd to add the target. Then cargo run, and it compiles, flashes, with debug output.

These are from anecdotes. I am probably doing something wrong, but it is my experience so far.