"Next Generation" kernel configuration?

[Conrad J. Sabatier]

Just musing on an idea here:

I've been thinking for a while now about trying to write a tool to make
kernel configuration easier, sort of a "make config" (as in ports) for
the kernel, similar to what's available on some of the Linux distros.

Ideally, such a tool would be capable of automatically adapting itself
to handle and present as choices, in an orderly and logical fashion,
whatever devices, options, etc. were currently available, as defined by
the files in /sys/conf et al.

The major hurdle to overcome, it appears to me, is that the scheme
currently employed to describe the available devices, options, etc.
does not lend itself very easily at all to any kind of automatic
parsing or other manipulations.  Determining dependencies between
components programmatically, for one thing, seems well near impossible.
The NOTES files, in their current form, make even finding the comment
associated with a particular option or device extremely difficult, if
not impossible.

Has this ever come up for discussion before?  Now that we have rcNG,
with its explicit declarations of dependencies, has any thought been
given to doing something similar with kernel configuration files? 
Something still human-readable, yet more orderly and systematic, easier
for a machine to interpret, present and verify?

A dependable tool offering a menu-driven means of configuring the
kernel, ensuring proper config file syntax, dependency handling,
prevention of incompatible options, etc. -- as well as online
documentation, advice, suggestions and warnings, plus perhaps a nice
set of default selections -- would be a very nice addition to the
system.  But to bring it about, obviously a major reworking of the
current system of kernel configuration files would be required.

Thoughts?

-- 
Conrad J. Sabatier <conrads at cox.net> -- "In Unix veritas"