the glib configure.ac has:
AC_CACHE_CHECK([for growing stack pointer],glib_cv_stack_grows,[
        AC_TRY_RUN([
	volatile int *a = 0, *b = 0;
	void f (int i) { volatile int x = 5; if (i == 0) b = &x; else f (i - 1); }
	int main () { volatile int y = 7; a = &y; f (100); return b > a ? 0 : 1; }
       	],
	glib_cv_stack_grows=yes
        ,
	glib_cv_stack_grows=no
        ,)
])

in the cross-compile case, this fails.  it's kind of overkill considering how few arches out there actually grow the stack up.  this should have fallback like:
case $host_cpu in
hppa*|metag*) glib_cv_stack_grows=yes ;;
*) glib_cv_stack_grows=no ;;
esac