[tazjin]

> I am curious if anyone have experience to share?

With one exception (nginx, because it's very well supported) I always just use raw config files and ignore the options. For TVL[0] we've written a bunch of NixOS modules[1] ourselves where the upstream one was either not flexible enough, or deviated strongly from how we wanted things to work.

Nix is the kind of tool that lends itself well to solutions that are more complicated than the problem, but once you get comfortable with the tool it's easy to sidestep that. Despite these warts it's 100% worth the investment.

[0]: https://code.tvl.fyi/about/

[1]: https://cs.tvl.fyi/depot/-/tree/ops/modules

[aaronchall]

Maybe you could propose the improvements in nixpkgs so we can all benefit from them?

[tazjin]

In some cases the upstream modules are simply targeting a different use-case. A lot of modules are written by someone scratching a specific itch - ours are no different, but scratch different itches.

I think a better solution (long-term) is actually a redesigned way of doing service declarations where we're dealing with composable bits of data that describe services (so that a module isn't all-or-nothing anymore). Too much on the plate to design that though ...