My question: How do you change the location that libtool searches for a library?

Please read below for details...

I am using LFS, but I am not a programmer. Recently I installed libX11 onto my system in order to get another program that I wanted to correctly compile. I have the habit of installing with a prefix like --prefix=/my/home/dir/filename so that I can see what will get installed onto my system. Then I delete /my/home/dir/filename, change prefix to --prefix=/usr and go from there.

I am trying to compile gnome-libs 1.4.2. During the compile process I get the following error:

grep: /home/mrguy/lib/libX11.la: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /home/mrguy/lib/libX11.la: No such file or directory
libtool: link: `/home/mrguy/lib/libX11.la' is not a valid libtool archive
make[3]: *** [libgnomeui.la] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/sources/mybeyond/gnome-libs-1.4.2/libgnomeui'
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/sources/mybeyond/gnome-libs-1.4.2/libgnomeui'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/sources/mybeyond/gnome-libs-1.4.2'
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2

As you can see this is were I first installed the libX11 package when I did my initial "test" install. The actual libX11.la is located in /usr/lib. Now I tried editing the libX11.la file's last entry (/usr/lib/libX11.la) from the original, which had libdir='/home/mrguy/lib' to

# Directory that this library needs to be installed in:
libdir='/usr/lib'

but I still get the same compile error.

I did the "easy" workaround. I made a symlink so that the compile could continue. It did without a problem.

So again how do I reconfigure where libtool looks for a library?

i think you are going to have to edit the rest of that .la script
and any other .la scripts realated to the same library
fix all the dependancy paths and everything

or just delete the bogus install of X11 libs and do it again

and from now on if you are going to make a pre-install
(all the files are not usually installed in --prefix dir by the way -- cofig files and whatnot lots of time go in standard places)
make sure you at least delete the entire build package and
start new with a fresh copy of the package from the gzip
before the second ./configure

or better just don't do that anymore !