The configure script allows --disable-gconf. This does
not work. At compile time you will get the following
errors:

gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../../.. -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE 
-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=6
4 -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include 
-I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/
home/guido/videoencoding/gstreamer-0.4.0 
-I/home/guido/videoencoding/gstreamer-0
.4.0/libs -I../../..//home/guido/videoencoding/gstreamer-0.4.0/. 
-I../../..//hom
e/guido/videoencoding/gstreamer-0.4.0/./libs -g -I../../../gst-libs 
-Wall -Werro
r -g -O2 -c gconf.c -MT libgstgconf_la-gconf.lo -MD -MP -MF 
.deps/libgstgconf_la
-gconf.TPlo  -fPIC -DPIC -o libgstgconf_la-gconf.lo
In file included from gconf.c:5:
gconf.h:9:32: gconf/gconf-client.h: No such file or directory
make[4]: *** [libgstgconf_la-gconf.lo] Error 1
make[4]: Leaving directory 
`/home/guido/videoencoding/gst-plugins-0.4.0/gst-libs
/gst/gconf'
make[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory 
`/home/guido/videoencoding/gst-plugins-0.4.0/gst-libs
/gst'
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory 
`/home/guido/videoencoding/gst-plugins-0.4.0/gst-libs
'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory 
`/home/guido/videoencoding/gst-plugins-0.4.0'