[ILUG] broken libtool?

[Nick Murtagh]

I'm trying to compile gnome-python with gtkhtml support, but it dies
with this error:

/bin/sh ./libtool --mode=link gcc  -g -O2   -o _gdkimlibmodule.la -rpath 
/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages -module -avoid-version 
gdkimlibmodule.lo -L/usr/lib -lgdk_imlib -L/usr/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk 
-lgdk -rdynamic -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -lXi -lXext -lX11 -lm 
rm -fr .libs/_gdkimlibmodule.la .libs/_gdkimlibmodule.* 
.libs/_gdkimlibmodule.*

gcc -shared  gdkimlibmodule.lo  -L/usr/lib /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so 
-L/usr/X11R6/lib /usr/lib/libgtk.so /usr/lib/libgdk.so /usr/lib/libgmodule.so 
/usr/lib/libglib.so -ldl -lXi -lXext -lX11 -lm  -Wl,-soname 
-Wl,_gdkimlibmodule.so.0 -o .libs/_gdkimlibmodule.so.0.0.0

gcc: /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so: No such file or directory

Now, /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so exists, but is a symlink, which gcc doesn't 
seem to like. If I change "/usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so" to "-lgdk_imlib" the 
link succeeds. If you look at the original libtool command line, you'll see 
that "-lgdk_imlib" was passed as a parameter! So why did libtool change that 
to "/usr/lib/libgdl_imlib.so" which doesn't seem to work with gcc?

Is there any flag I can pass to gcc to make it follow symlinks in this 
situation?

Thanks,
Nick