To use the Clutter APIs, you must include the headers for the libraries, and link to their shared libraries. The necessary compiler and linker commands can be obtained from the pkg-config utiltity like so:

pkg-config clutter-0.8 --cflags
pkg-config clutter-0.8 --libs

However, if you are using the "autotools" (automake, autoconf, etc) build system, you will find it more convenient to use the PKG_CHECK_MODULES macro in your configure.ac file. For instance:

PKG_CHECK_MODULES(EXAMPLE, clutter-0.8)
AC_SUBST(EXAMPLE_CFLAGS)
AC_SUBST(EXAMPLE_LIBS)

You should then use the generated _CFLAGS and _LIBS definitions in your Makefile.am files. Note that you may mention other libraries in the same PKG_CHECK_MODULES call, separated by spaces. For instance, some examples in this tutorial require extra Clutter libraries, such as clutter-gtk-0.8, clutter-cairo-0.8 or clutter-gst-0.8.