The STEPUP_ROOT variable

If you are working on a large project with several subdirectories, it may be useful to define the STEPUP_ROOT environment variable. It should contain the absolute path of the top-level directory where you would normally call the stepup and cleanup commands. (The top-level directory contains the .stepup subdirectory and the top-level plan.py.)

With STEPUP_ROOT set, it is no longer necessary to change to the top-level directory before running stepup and cleanup. Also, the cleanup arguments will be interpreted correctly in subdirectories.

You can manually set STEPUP_ROOT in the top-level directory as follows:

export STEPUP_ROOT="${PWD}"

However, this can be tedious, as it has to be set each time you open a new terminal window. It is much easier to set such variables using direnv. Once direnv is configured on your system, you can create an .envrc file with the above export line in the top-level directory. Each time you change to the project directory or any of its subdirectories, the STEPUP_ROOT directory will automatically be set correctly.