Getting executable to link to libtool-built library

[David Bruce]

Hello,

I have two related programs (tuxmath and tuxtype) that share a lot of
code in a human-maintained, copy-and-past fashion.  We have been
working on moving the overlapping code into a separate library
package, libt4kcommon.  All the programs use Autoconf, Automake, and
Gettext where needed.

I have been able to build libt4kcommon using lib_LTLIBRARIES =
libt4kcommon.la in the relevant Makefile.am.  The library builds a
tarball successfully with make distcheck, and installs under
/usr/local/lib with make install.  So far so good.

I'm running into trouble, however, when I try to use the library in
e.g. tuxmath.  Since the library is being built separately from
tuxmath, I believe I need to use AC_CHECK_LIB in tuxmath's
configure.ac.  However, the configure script fails to find it, even
thought the library files are present.

I also tried using LDADD = /usr/local/lib/libt4kcommon.la in tuxmath's
Makefile.am, which fails with "no rule to make libt4kcommon.la needed
by tuxmath".  However, I don't think LDADD is the correct approach
here anyway.

Anyone have any suggestions for the probably obvious step I'm missing?

Thanks,

David Bruce