I suspect this is naive since I avoid the module system as much as I can and my knowledge is a little superficial+user-oriented, but whenever I’m doing something like setting up a development shell for a database or web server that has a module, I end up wondering if it would make sense to ~pull more config-generation logic towards the packages in the form of passthru functions and slim down the existing module implementations in nixos/nix-darwin/home-manager (and maybe devenv or others?)
I guess it might make the external module systems too sensitive to the nixpkgs rev, but I could also imagine it making it easier to:
- deduplicate work
- get more people invested in refining the config abstractions
- create more leverage for setting up dev environments
- make it easier to iterate on the groundwork needed for good BSD/etc. modules by exercising them in dev environments
- minimize the module work needed to jump from there to the first palatable BSD-based NixOS (and maybe also each Nth? not knowledgeable enough about BSDs to know how much overlap there’d be at this level)