During configuration the prescence of 'remsh' is detected. The result is reflected in the macro HAVE_REMSH (stored in config.h). The configure script sets that macro to '0' or '1' depending on the prescence or not of 'remsh'. In main.c the macro is tested by #ifdef and is always true.
I've checked in a change to configure that only defines HAVE_REMSH if it has a non-zero value. Thanks for the report!