I have made and installed sdl from source files. Another file requires sdl and sdl-dev to compile. How do I link the src files with the sdl-dev path? or do I have to reconfigure and install again?

PS. This is an oversimplification of my problem. I am using slackware 12.0 and I dont' know much about linux commands. I am a CS student and I thought it would be instructional for learning more command lines to use a "simplier" nix without all the GUIs.

If you installed SDL from source, the "dev" files should have been installed. These are files like C headers and a script sdl-config. The headers would have been installed in ${PREFIX}/include/SDL and the script in ${PREFIX}/bin where ${PREFIX} is the prefix you installed SDL into (/usr/local by default). Whatever you're trying to build is probably looking for sdl-config to figure out where everything else is installed. Is the location of sdl-config in your PATH?

Also, SDL has several additional packages (e.g., sdl_gfx, sdl_ttf, sdl_net, etc.). It's not one of these that the failing package is looking for is it? Why don't you post the actual errors you're getting from the failing package?

ok, 'sdl-config --prefix=/usr/local/include/SDL' fixed the problem, apparently it just wasn't linking correctly, thnx for your explaination!