Problem : 
libreadline.so was already present on the machine, however the cmake check NEW_READLINE_INTERFACE was unsuccessfull indicating, thus bundled library had to be used instead of  system library.
The problem was that the value for HAVE_HIST_ENTRY cmake variable  was cached with incorrect  value (1 on NetBSD).

The fix is to change HAVE_HIST_ENTRY to 0 with  CACHE FORCE, after switching to bundled readline.