simple question regarding the building of psql

I really like the feature of psql that allows you to press "up" to go to
your command history, and press "home" to go to the beginning, etc (like
a normal shell). However, I use debian linux. I have correctly compiled
pg on a mandrake box before (so that it has the more effective version
of psql), but never on debian. I thought it had something to do with
curses or ncurses, but after './configure'ing it didn't put the
libraries I have in any of the Makefiles (I have the libraries in
/usr/lib, .so and .a). I am using 7.1beta6 (although the same thing
seemed to happen since I have been using pg on debian).

Thanks for any help,
   Jeff Davis