The approach of using direnv and putting .env files in directories encouraged me to pull more variables from other places in config files, or shell scripts, or

The approach of using direnv and putting .env files in directories encouraged me to pull more variables from other places in config files, or shell scripts, or global variables in a programming project, and put them in environment variables instead. It's very aligned with the 12 factor philosophy [1]. Also, many scripts start by just defining a bunch of variables -- and many of those, in terms of other variables. Say, a PROJECT_ROOT directory, and a PROJECT_DOCS directory defined relative to that, etc. Then, a bunch of command parsing logic, after defining all those default values, so the user can set values of their own. Then, finally, the script can start doing the thing it was put there for in the first place. With the .envrc approach, some of that stuff is pulled out of the script (making it shorter and simpler) and considered part of the directory environment. [1] https://12factor.net/config