was poking around XaAES about a year ago, doing some minor modifications just to get familiar with the code. I gave up. I make too many errors while typing, and spent too much time waiting for gcc to tell me that something is wrong, but it can't tell me where. It's easier with Pure C. Alt+C, and in a second I get a long, nice list of my errors, with (correct!) line-numbers and all.
I guess the reason why you don't want to use cross compiler are Atari feelings related, right? :) Because thanks to Vincent's work on gcc and Aranym guys' on Aranym, you can not only develop code faster and more comfortable but you can also faster _test_ it. For example, when I'm doing some freemint related stuff, I set up KDevelop (with all that Alt+C, nice list of errors, line numbers and all :), output path is set exactly to the place where aranym is looking for it, so it's just matter of compile / switch to aranym / restart the aranym operation. 10 seconds at most. What could be more comfortable?