If somebody can please clarify this for me. I have GLIB installed. This has been checked. I want to make my fresh install of xmms see that this was installed. I have been told by a fellow linux used to use the PKG-CONFIG command to export a file that tells XMMS where GLIB is. I still am very confused on this. I have looked at some responses to my question yet nothing has clarified this to me. If you could please enlighten me with your wisdom that would be great. Thanks again. Cheers.

Well, I can clarify what pkg-config does for you, but I'm not quite sure how it would help you with your xmms install.

pkg-config is a nice program that will give you compiler arguments to locate the libraries header files and any special flags the compiler needs to use the code in the libraries. In a nutshell, you use the pkg-config command so you don't have to remember exactly where the library files are installed or (potentially) cryptic compiler arguments.

So, as an example, open up a command-line and type this command:
You may need to be root to do that. For my system, it spits back this:
If you get a command not found, the pkg-config is not installed.

If you get a "package was not found", then the library you're looking for is either not installed, or not configured to use pkg-config.

So the output I got above is supposed to be fed to the compiler during the "make" portion when compiling a program that uses glib. Since the make command reads directly from a Makefile, there's no way for you to introduce these options to the compiler without manually hacking at the Makefile itself. The configure script should take care of that for you... hacking the Makefile is not typically required.

I'm not sure what your asking and I'm no expert but I use
"export PKG_CONFIG_PATH" when compiling.
Sometimes a configure script will not be be able to find a
particular .pc file. I believe these files link libs during a compile.
They are in /usr/lib/pkgconfig/ or /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/
For example if I was compiling a package and it could not find
"glib.pc", I would do:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig

Then start the compile again.

Well thanks for your help althought I have a few questions to follow up here, concerning Dark_helmuts response I have to tell you when I did

[mike@S01060020ed57a91d mike]$ pkg-config --cflags --libs glib
sh: line 1: glib-config: command not found
sh: line 1: glib-config: command not found
sh: line 1: glib-config: command not found

as you can see it tells me that the glib is not install, to me this is odd because I installed sucessfully. Is there something that I am missing here?

and to reply to the other response from auditek747 I have to ask where would I at the "export PKG-CONFIG" statement. thanks again!

I'll repeat that I'm no expert, but I think that output means
that you don't have pkg-config installed.
That seems odd but what do I know
Look in /usr/bin for pkg-config.
If it's not there it should be on your Mandrake cd's.
If for some bizzare reason it is not on your cd's (I'm sure it is)
you can google for rpm's or get the source from freedesktop.org.