I sometimes install packages to a test directory to see what will get installed. For some reason I have the following problem as a result:

When trying to compile gnome-libs (1.4) I get an error about a library not existing. It is on my system in /usr/lib, but the error expects the library to be located in the test directory /home/user/test.

I erased the test directory after looking at what was would be installed. I then reconfigured using /usr as my prefix. Have I done something incredibly wrong here? I tried uninstalling the library using libtools --mode=uninstall and I recompiled the library using prefix=/usr in a cleanly opened source directory, but I still get errors when compiling gnome libs.

Is there some config file or something that I can manually alter to get libtools to stop complaining? (I did use a soft link to get it to compile in the end, but I dont want the test directory cluttering up /home.)

Any suggestions?