[gentoo-user] [OT] Anybody really understand the gnu autotools?

[walt]

I'm trying to build an xfce4 applet that's not in portage. For
reasons I don't understand there are some standard gnome headers
that don't get pulled in during the configure process, like orbit,
libbonobo and libbonoboui.

I edited the autoconf.in to check for those standard libraries,
and it did partly work.  The generated makefiles now have correct
entries like LIBBONOBO_CFLAGS.

The problem is that those flags are never used during the compile
phase. So, anyone know how make that extra step happen?

Thanks.