compiling tcl: "atexit" error

[Charles Blair <c-blair@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>]

   I tried downloading the current version of tcl (8.3.4)
from their web site and compiling it on my year-old
"potato" debian.  I typed ./configure and "make", and
at some point got this error:


/ceblair/incoming/tcl8.3.4/unix/libtcl8.3.so: undefined reference to `atexit'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [tclsh] Error 1

    This seemed to puzzle the people on the tcl mailing list.  Can
anyone here explain what might be causing this?

   PS I tried compiling tcl for myself, rather than using the debian
package, because I needed to control where the binary went for later
use.  In any case, I think it's a legitimate question why the
compilation is failing.