As soon as you install httpd + APR in a system location, you no longer can install subversion + APR in a system location. This was the basis of getting vendor packaging files (like RPM and PKG) into APR and httpd, so that there was a system APR and packages that depended on it correctly.
If the user installs httpd in a custom directory, then bundling makes sense, but if httpd is supposed to go into /usr or /usr/local then bundling becomes a big problem.
APR has grown up. At some point, APR must graduate to be a "system" library, and I think that time is httpd v2.2.x.
I'm just not convinced that folks will have APR 1.x as a system library at this point. If APR were optional, I might tend to agree. However, it's a mandatory dependence. I really dislike all those GNOME packages that require a whole bunch of implicit dependencies that they never tell you about. Bundling the mandatory dependencies as a fallback is goodness.
I would be happy to switch the find_ap{ru}.m4 to try to look for an installed APR/APR-util first if --with-apr{-util} is not specified. I'm shocked it doesn't do that already. Would that alleviate your concerns? -- justin
