One I would like to see is for dj-database-url (https://github.com/jazzband/dj-database-url) to be built-into the project. It is one of those extensions I am always going to install because it is just so handy.
I agree with you. Someone already proposed it in the past but can be proposed again.
To be explicitly clear, I think you could strip out the environment variable loading stuff. Really just want there to be a standardized database url format parser. Does a lot to encourage not keeping database configuration in settings.py if there is a guided path to loading the secret.