# Compiling libaccounts-glib applications

Building your application against libaccounts-glib is straightforward, and this documentation give some hints for those new to the process.

## Using pkg-config to query compiler and linker flags

To compile your own application which uses libaccounts-glib, you must give the compiler the location of the libaccounts-glib header files, and the linker the name of the library to link with. The easiest way to do this is to query those flags from the pkg-config file installed by libaccounts-glib. For example, to query both the compiler and linker flags, run:

    pkg-config --cflags --libs libaccounts-glib

In order for the pkg-config execution to succeed, you must have the development files for libaccounts-glib installed on your system. In most distributions, these are installed in a separate development package. Installing such packages is outside the scope of this documentation.

The `libaccounts-glib.pc` file installed by libaccounts-glib also contains several other useful variables, including the install locations for application-file-format, provider-file-format, service-file-format and service-type-file-format. Check the installed file for details, or query the list of variables with pkg-config:

    pkg-config --print-variables libaccounts-glib