#[2] has a conf generator website? My experience with hard coded conf files is users run with settings they don't understand.
Bitcoin Core question:
Am I missing something here, or?
There is no longer a static example bitcoin.conf, so you have to generate it dynamically using a script (contrib/devtools/gen-bitcoin-conf.sh), but that script is not part of the binary distribution? (right?)
And there isn't documentation listing the meaning of all the configuration options to put into the file (which is what you get by running the above script, I believe)? (maybe I'm wrong? my searching is drawing a blank). As an example of that, see this:
https://github.com/MrChrisJ/fullnode/blob/master/Setup_Guides/bitcoin.conf
.. but that's very old, and obv it's better to be able to create your own.
It used to be the case a long time ago that running bitcoind would autogenerate a bitcoin.conf, but that's no longer true either.
How does someone running bitcoind from the binary distribution, figure out how to set config options?
Discussion
That's not an argument against having the comments explaining the meaning of each variable.
It's debatable whether it's an argument against doing what e.g. Tor does and have all the useful variables *there*, with defaults, and commented out where appropriate.
The main thing is the documentation. I would be fine with just having it in external documentation.
In particular it doesn't make sense to put the generation function in an area only realistically accessible to developers, when non-dev users need this (in a sense that's the whole point of config files - to translate functionality manipulation into a form that non-developers can use).