direnv is one of those things I've never found a use for because it's so simple to roll your own and because there are invariably situations I have that they do

direnv is one of those things I've never found a use for because it's so simple to roll your own and because there are invariably situations I have that they don't handle well, my work needs don't map well to a directory based approach for example. My home implementation that's evolved over the years is about 60 lines of bash but a simple bare bones (and unsafe) one is as easy as: function cd { builtin cd "${@}"; [[ -f "$PWD/.env" ]] && source "$PWD/.env"; } To me stow seems similar, I see little to no advantage over a script/makefile that creates the symlinks and you have the complexity of another tool to learn.