The instructions tell the person installing to do the rename, because many webservers require the file to "already exist" in order to be able to gain sufficient permissions to write. And, if the server requires higher permissions in order for PHP to write then those must be granted manually and so the file must be present in order to grant those permissions to the file.
But, if your server has relaxed security such that PHP can create and delete files without modifying any permissions, then zc_install can indeed create those files directly, without you needing to create them first or rename from dist-configure first.
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