I use files in /etc/exports.d/ to control my exports.  That has advantages
when dealing with exports from remote machine using some orchestration FW
(ansible in my case) - no need to parse/edit /etc/exports file directly.

Consider I have 'backend' host specified in /etc/hosts file, I have something
like:

  # cat /etc/exports
  # cat /etc/exports.d/test.exports 
  /data/nfs-points/results backend(rw,no_root_squash)
  /data/nfs-points/lock-builder backend(rw,no_root_squash)
  # exportfs -va
  exportfs: No file systems exported!
  exporting backend:/data/nfs-points/lock-builder
  exporting backend:/data/nfs-points/results
  # echo $?
  1

That ^^ exit value breaks 'systemctl start nfs-server'.  During parsing of
'/etc/exports', the 'exports_errno' is set (and warning is thrown to stderr)
and then it is propagated as program exit value.

  # rm /etc/exports
  # exportfs -va
  exportfs: can't open /etc/exports for reading
  exportfs: No file systems exported!
  exporting backend:/data/nfs-points/lock-builder
  exporting backend:/data/nfs-points/results

So no "easy" solution for this?

Pavel