static libs and libtool-1.5

[Piotr Sawuk]

also in older versions I did experience strange behaviour when
compiling some programs which depend on libs which I only have
available as static libs in my lib-directory:

for example now while compiling ORBit2, the makefile executes
libtool with "-lpopt" somewhere after the "--mode=link gcc".
now, I do not have any shared libpopt, "ls /usr/lib/libpopt*"
only shows libpopt.a and libpopt.la and so as the resulting
compiler-command libtool inserts "/usr/lib/.libs/libpopt.a"
in the place of "-lpopt". the same problem I had with some
other program requiring expat which I only had in the dir
"/usr/src/abi/expat/.libs" statically-linked for use with
abiword, and there too libtool made the same mistake of
inserting "/usr/src/abi/expat/.libs/.libs/libexpat.a" after
finding the correct lib in the searchpath.

for now the workaround is to explicitely give the libfile-name
for compilation (which was possible through configure in above
example with expat, but I had to alter the makefiles for compiling
ORBit2). but then, maybe that's a feature and I'm missing something?

P