It's hard, but I've for awhile thought that developing these tools in a more bottom-up would help. And of course orthogonal components, as you say, is a good idea for just about anything.
I don't agree. Matter of fact, I recommended it here in an answer to the reproducible build meme that pops up. See my conversation with jeffreyrogers here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182282