diff --git a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/slurm/package.py b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/slurm/package.py
index 60879b1fe75fd39561b239bf5d1f83c3ba1e2e53..a6f5fc59b5b4f0022bc6678dda21eef8d1a2ad22 100644
--- a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/slurm/package.py
+++ b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/slurm/package.py
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ class Slurm(AutotoolsPackage):
     depends_on('munge')
     depends_on('openssl')
     depends_on('pkgconfig', type='build')
-    depends_on('readline')
+    depends_on('readline', when='+readline')
     depends_on('zlib')
 
     depends_on('gtkplus+X', when='+gtk')
@@ -89,9 +89,7 @@ def configure_args(self):
         if '~gtk' in spec:
             args.append('--disable-gtktest')
 
-        if '+readline' in spec:
-            args.append('--with-readline={0}'.format(spec['readline'].prefix))
-        else:
+        if '~readline' in spec:
             args.append('--without-readline')
 
         if '+hdf5' in spec: