I could be mistaken but I think some of us are talking about "how do we specify the default for X", and not "do we specify X at compile time or at runtime".
I would much rather "seed" the default values via configure switches than have to take the author's choice and then have to either wiggle config files on every installation, or wiggle the source distribution. As for "don't use --enable or --with for anything except what they are documented for", I have a recollection of RMS telling me that the NTP configure process was Huge and I shouldn't have used --enable and --with the way I did. I asked him what I should do instead, and I don't believe we ever found alternatives that would be acceptable. It may be wrong (or merely suboptimal) to abuse --with and --enable, but if the only tool you have is a hammer... H
