Setting listchars via vim.options

[irobot]

I tried setting vim.opt.listchars as:

vim.options.list = true;
vim.options.listchars = { trail = "." };

This results in an error on nvim startup.

E5113: Error while calling lua chunk: /nix/store/[...]-init.lua:58: Invalid 'value': expected valid option type, got Dict

Looking at the generated init.lua the options are translated into:

vim.o.list = true
vim.o.listchars = {["trail"] = "·"}

While vim.o.list is a valid option, it appears that vim.o.listchars is not. It should instead be referred to as vim.opt.listchars. At the same time, vim.opt.* seems to be valid for any options that are currently accessed via vim.o.*.

My workaround is to import a one-liner lua file via vim.options.extraLuaFiles.

But that got me thinking:

does it make sense to replace vim.o with vim.opt in general, or am I missing an important nuance?

One such potential pitfall is that in neovim, as an example
:lua print(vim.o.tabstop) prints out 2, whereas
:lua print(vim.opt.tabstop) prints out table: 0x7ff58f08dee8.

But setting :lua vim.opt.tabstop = 8 does take effect as confirmed by
:lua print(vim.o.tabstop) printing out 8.

[irobot]

Update

After reading some more (:h lua-options), the difference between vim.o and vim.opt is now clear to me.

It appears that what I needed to do is:

vim.options.listchars = "trail:·,tab:» ";

This works, but it's a mix of three different languages (Nix, Lua, Vim), and the correct syntax is not easily discoverable.

Now, if vim.options were translated into vim.opt instead of vim.o, a nix attribute set would have worked too!

vim.options.listchars = { trail = "·"; tab = "» "; };

This is pure Nix!

Do you see any downsides to changing the way vim.options is translated into Lua as described above?

Or maybe use vim.o for primitive values, but generate vim.opt for lists and attrsets?