[snowwrestler]

Packages are far more ephemeral than people assume, because of the constant flow of security patches, bug fixes, and feature updates. If you're running a long-lived system, at some point those version numbers will matter.

I think the more useful way to think of packages and configuration are that they are necessary compliments. An unconfigured package doesn't do what you want, and configuration without a package doesn't do anything at all.

The theory is, they're both components of system state, so why not manage them together?

But to me it sounds like saying that text and layout are necessary compliments for a magazine, so why not manage them together? Because it turns out that is a horrible idea. Anyone who does professional publishing manages them separately.

"Do it all" tools rarely do it all well.