questions about the configure script for building postgres 9.0.3 from source

Hi,
I trolled the archives as I was having difficulty in building Postgres 9.0.3
from source. I was running configure with the following options (the pasted in
text of this I had wrapped in a shell script). I apologize in advance that
setting up the question takes a bit of context.

./configure CFLAGS='-O2 -I /usr/local/include:/usr/include -L
/usr/local/lib64:/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib64:/usr/lib' --prefix=/usr/local
--enable-nls --enable-profiling --with-wal-segsize=64 --with-perl
--with-python --with-pam --with-ldap --with-openssl --with-ossp-uuid
--with-libxml --with-libxslt --with-system-tzdata=/usr/share/zoneinfo
--with-libs=/usr/local/lib64:/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib64:/usr/lib:/usr/apache2/lib
--with-includes=/usr/local/include:/usr/include

and I was constantly receiving the error that libreadline was not installed,
although I had personally installed it, verified its installation and ensured
that ldconfig could find it.

Upon inspecting config.log, I found many references to an error in conftest.c,
where various ifndef macros were suggesting a call to "choke me", which is both
invalid syntax (no semi colon and of course choke is not defined either in any
header files.

When I ran the contents of the shell script on the command line itself, I
managed to trap a different error, namely missing libs for xml, xslt, and a
missing msgfmt binary. So I installed those and then from both the command line
and the shell script, the configure script worked fine.

So my questions are:
1) upon not finding libs such as xml, xslt or the msgfmt binary, is the
configure script set (perhaps by bug) to report that libreadline is not
installed (when in fact it is?). Another way of phrasing this question: does
configure misreport that which is missing?
2) why would running configure from the command line expose a different error
than when the same command was wrapped in a shell script (albeit with the xml,
xslt libs missing and msgfmt missing)?
3) not too important as it isn't fatal to the build from source endeavor, but
what's up with those "choke me" items that leave detritus in config.log?

I am happy to attach the script files, and provide more details as to how to
replicate the error messages that, although indicative of an error, apparently
set the wrong error message.

Thanks,
Stephan Doliov