Just last night while working on linking mysql, I found 
<http://209.220.160.228/sw/bin/12/supportwizard.cgi/00659422> that 
explains a lot of this.  So does 'man gcc' (the portion for '-lxxxxx' 
which automagically becomes a reference to /usr/lib/libxxxxx.a or .so 
during linking).

Gene

> Don Livingston wrote:
> > 
> > Hi, folks,
> > 
> > In preparation for installing the latest version of PAN newsreader on my
> > Mandrake 8.2, I needed to update libxml. So I downloaded the Mandrake
> > rpm and installed it with KPackage. Installation seemed to go correctly
> > I can now see that libxml.so.1.8.17 is in /usr/lib, and the link
> > libxml.so.1 points to it. But when I try ./configure for PAN, the
> > configuration script doesn't think it's there. Any ideas on how to get
> > the system to see it?
> 
> run "rehash"
> 
> this will notify the current terminal sesion that you think the state of
> the world has changed and it has to re-sync with the OS.
> 
> also check to make sure that the lib is in /usr/lib and that /usr/lib is
> also in the /etc/ld.so.config file and run ldconfig
> 
> this will allow programs to find the librarys without having to set
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH...
> 
>   EBo --
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