I was more concerned about passing CFLAGS when linking - he already has a LIBS variable; you're right that the 'canonical' name for his LIBS variable is LDLIBS (as well as LOADLIBES - anyone an idea where that name came from?).

EDIT: stop editing your answer while I'm writing my own ;)

According to the manual, the built-in rule for linking an executable `n` from a single object file is

    $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) n.o $(LOADLIBES) $(LDLIBS)