I believe this was added due cross-compiled Ruby 2.0? generated extensions are huge...

You can avoid that by cross compiling Ruby with the following commands:

```
$ rake-compiler cross-ruby VERSION=2.0.0-p247 HOST=i686-w64-mingw32 debugflags="-g"
```

That will remove the need for this entire trick.

BTW: Another developer has been working on a Vagrant box for help out with cross-compilation and soon `x64-mingw32` support will be merged: tjschuck/rake-compiler-dev-box#2