I don't mean to disagree... yak-shaving is fun, and you get to learn about the internal workings of so many tools during the whole process (I myself am trying to have every project 'make'-able, with self-documenting Makefiles).

But I see the point the author has made:

That personalized configurations are hard to recreate for other users, particularly those that are less technologically adept.

And then, you're stuck maintaining everything...