Neat! What I and some folks at Opencraft have been doing is similar, but sorta the other way around. We use direnv so that when we’re in a particular directory, a set of variables is loaded, venvs activated, etc. The point is that this will now be even more useful with your patch! For example, this is my .envrc:
# ~/src/devstack-juniper/.envrc
export COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=devstack-juniper
export OPENEDX_RELEASE=devstack-juniper
export VIRTUAL_ENV=venv
layout python-venv
(I set OPENEDX_RELEASE to this unconventional value because I like to snapshot the containers immediately after provisioning, so I can restore them quickly after testing invasive/destructive patches.)
In any case, thanks again!