But I do note that some files in nixpkgs have docblocks that look like they could well be extracted and rendered into documentation similar to how Doxygen or Sphinx works:
This could be as sophisticated as something like rnix-parser, or as naive as some regular expressions. Has there been any effort made to bridge this gap, and build a doc-extractor for a Nix codebase, that could render out the documented functions to markdown or rST pages, for example for inclusion in a Sphinx-based manual?
I don’t think I have the resources to maintain a fully separate manual for this codebase, but it sure would be helpful to be able to at least extract properly formatted comments.
Nix does not really enforce any structure like some other languages so any tool will have to be code base specific. Maybe something like std can bring that in the future.