This has no doubt been thrashed out by developers before, but is there any reason why the config script can't just call kpsewhich for each class to see if it's found.
Right now, a fancy latex file is run to do the tex-class detection and report writing. configure.py simply runs it. Because this .tex file also does a lot of other stuff, it is very difficult to divide it and detect tex-classes one by one. I guess the real problem is that very few people know both tex and python well enough to do the job. Cheers, Bo
