It's unclear why this was added originally, but assuming it was needed
20 years ago, it shouldn't be explicitly required nowadays. Current
versions of autotools already take care of exporting LDFLAGS to the
Makefile as needed (things are actually getting linked). That's why
the configure diffs show LDFLAGS still here, but shifted to a diff
place in the output list. A few dirs stop exporting LDFLAGS, but
that's because they don't do any linking, only compiling, so it's
correct.
As for the use of $ldflags instead of the standard $LDFLAGS, I can't
really explain that at all. Just use the right name so users don't
have to dig into why their setting isn't respected, and then use a
non-standard name instead. Adjust the testsuite to match.
f159663b08