Quoting KatolaZ (katolaz@???):

> named-checkconf is only half the story. The other half is
> named-checkzone :P

Oh, and also: If your zonefiles have $INCLUDE directives and BIND9 is
running in a chroot, then named-checkzone will break as it will not
understand the referenced file's pathspec as being phrased in the
context of the chroot. By contrast, named-checkconf -z -t $CHROOTSPEC
does the right thing.

That was the specific reason why named-checkzone was useless at my prior
firm. We both made extensive use of $INCLUDE and ran BIND9 chrooted.