I'd paste the output of ffmpeg's ./configure --help here to illustrate the point, but it would be a rather hostile HN post due to its sheer size. It's not reall

I'd paste the output of ffmpeg's ./configure --help here to illustrate the point, but it would be a rather hostile HN post due to its sheer size. It's not really practical to expect someone to configure dozens or even hundreds of optional libraries in a configuration file. It would be a major hassle to have to get a config file correct rather than config detecting as much as possible. ffmpeg is an extreme case, but it's proportionally not that uncommon; many of the things people most want to compile by hand are naturally the things with a ton of optional libraries. The easy cases with 0 or a handful of options are handled by your package manager and you don't care, because there aren't any "options" for you to disagree with.