rpath problems

[Noah Levitt <nlevitt columbia edu>]

Hello,

I'm trying to compile gtk with the runtime library search
path set to include the path to my X libraries. I've tried
many things, and the only way I've been able to get it to
work has been to copy and paste the gcc command that does
the linking, and then add this to it: 
-Wl,--rpath -Wl,/opt/xfree86-4.2.0/lib

Thus, this works:
$ gcc blah blah -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/opt/xfree86-4.2.0/lib

but somehow, this does not:
$ LDFLAGS="-Wl,--rpath -Wl,/opt/xfree86-4.2.0/lib" gcc blah blah 
Neither do
$ LDFLAGS="--rpath /opt/xfree86-4.2.0/lib" gcc blah blah
or
$ LDFLAGS="-R/opt/xfree86-4.2.0/lib" gcc blah blah
or
$ LD_RUN_PATH=/opt/xfree86-4.2.0/lib gcc blah blah

Presumably, if any of these worked, I could set the same
environment variables when running make, and it would work
for the whole thing.

So, I guess the question is, how do I get that string into
the Makefiles and onto the command line? Setting LDFLAGS to
it when running ./configure doesn't work, either.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Noah