@ThomasLandauer The exception is thrown if neither $configFile nor $configDistFile were found. Should this be reflected in the the message, f.e. by using Configuration files $configFile and $configDistFile could not be found?

I forgot, which config files are we talking about here? Probably codeception.yml or Functional.suite.yml? I've never seen a .yml,dist file of those (where would they come from?), so I figured that's not no important.
Besides, IMO, the idea of .dist is to contain factory default values, so if you don't have one, the solution is not to create one, but rather to create your own *.yml file - isn't it?
And lastly, I didn't want to cover all (exotic) use cases, but just point the user to the right direction (i.e. which file).