I'm seeing this on an m68k and on an i386, both running 1.6.2:

checking HIST_ENTRY is declared in readline/readline.h... yes
configure: error: Could not find system readline or libedit libraries
           Use --with-readline or --with-libedit to use the bundled
           versions of libedit or readline
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/pkgsrc/databases/mysql4-client
...

This is probably due to the addition of --without-libedit. Should this be 
conditional on whether the system is running >=2.0?

John