Do I really need to specify library location for linking with automake?

I am working on a multi-platform C program. The makefile has become pretty complicated because of all the different compilers, library locations, etc. on each machine开发者_高级运维. I figured Autoconf/Automake would be a good solution, though my previous experience using those tools was minimal.

My Makefile.am has the line LIBS=-lX11, but linking fails with the error "/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lX11". I can work around this by adding "-L/usr/X11R6/lib/" to the definition of LIBS, but should I really need to do that? When I run ./configure, it says:

checking for X... libraries /usr/X11R6/lib, headers /usr/X11R6/include

So it seems like Automake should know where to find it. Is there a way I can reference its location in Makefile.am without having to hardcode it, since the X11 libs will be in a different place on each machine?

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Your Makefile.am should not set LIBS. If you need to link with a library, configure.ac should include a check for the library and the configure script will set LIBS accordingly. Also, Makefile.am should not specify paths to libraries. Each system should be configured so that the precompiler can find the headers and the linker can find the libraries. If the system is not set up so that the linker can find a library, the correct solution is for the user to specify the location in LDFLAGS rather than hard coding something in Makefile.am. (eg, rather than adding -L/p/a/t/h to a Makefile, you should add LDFLAGS=-L/p/a/t/h to the invocation of configure.)