John,
I mentioned before I'd been thinking up some ideas that go along with
some of the things you've proposed here. I'm working through a lot of
different ideas right now, but I've thrown up some notes in a totally
random part of the CloudStack wiki. Take a look, this is a complete
work in progress, but you can maybe get an idea of where my head is
going (complete with really bad grammar and typos).
Wiki:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Nothing+to+see+here...#Nothingtoseehere...-ModuleSystem
Some code too: https://github.com/ibuildthecloud/cloudstack-modules
This is based off of stuff I've done in the past. So nothing is too
hand wavy.
Darren