> Does anyone know if the build system of alsa-plugins could be improved > so that it doesn't use any external .la files when linking? You're asking the wrong question here. The build system works exactly like intended. It's the problem of la files that's bitten you. It's an annoying legacy quirk of libtool. If you i.e. pass '-lpulse' via libtool, the la file has priority over plain library. On modern systems, it's more of a bother than help, so most binary distros at this time remove la files even in their -devel packages. (though there are packages that actually use their la files, i.e. ImageMagick or mpg123, there aren't many of those - mostly just the ones using libltdl (and not even all of those)) See some of the posts on http://blog.flameeyes.eu/tag/libtool on this subject. Basically, your problem was that you've most likely done "make install" for pulseaudio and failed to remove installed la files. That in turn added reference to libsamplerate. On an related note: "sudo make install" can be a very good advice on "how to break your system".
