clips fails to cross build from source, because it builds for the build
architecture. Usually, that means one should pass --host to configure,
but clips' configure is too old to understand that. Instead, one is
supposed to export environment variables such as CC. The easiest way of
doing that is leveraging dpkg's buildtools.mk. Once done, it fails
stripping via install -s as that uses the build architecture strip.
Beyond breaking cross compilation, it also breaks
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nostrip and generation of -dbgsym packages. It is best
to defer all stripping to dh_strip, which knows the right strip and when
to strip. The attached patch fixes all of this. Please consider applying
it.

Helmut