how to check for a library with non-standard name

[Matej Tyc]

Hello,
I am cross-compiling using i486-mingw32-gcc. I use a library (DevIL
image loading library) that has precompiled Windows libraries.
Unfortunately those names are DevIL.{dll,lib,exp}. I have copied them to
the mingw lib directory. But I have found out so far that there is no
way how to check whether a library that doesn't have a form lib*.lib can
be checked by autoconf and linked with the rest without user
intervention. Renaming those files doesn't help, nor does creating of
symlinks having the right filename.
I had to do the linking manually, which can get extreme disgusting.
Is there some elegant way how to do this that I have missed? Windows
libraries have various names, so I think that solving this in some smart
way would benefit quite a lot of people that cross-compile to Windows
from time to time.
Regards,
Matej Tyc