An Example Of AC_SUBST In Practice

To see what is really going on, we need to look at configure.in and Makefile.am in tandem.

In configure.in...
PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBGLADE, libxml-2.0 >= 2.4.10 
                            atk >= 1.0.0
                            gtk+-2.0 >= 2.0.0)
AC_SUBST(LIBGLADE_LIBS)
AC_SUBST(LIBGLADE_CFLAGS)
and in Makefile.am.
INCLUDES = @LIBGLADE_CFLAGS@
libglade_LDADD = @LIBGLADE_LIBS@

Since autoconf defines Makefile variables for each substitution that it does, the last example could also be written as

INCLUDES = $(LIBGLADE_CFLAGS)
libglade_LDADD = $(LIBGLADE_LIBS)