holcommon's empty .env made the loader evaluate one blank line, which
tripped set -u. Verified afterwards on holcommon's real host stack: the CLI
and the make engine resolve the same five files and render a byte-identical
241-line compose config.
config: dotenv files are parsed, never sourced, so a value can hold a # or a
$(...) without breaking or executing. The make engine included .env with
make syntax, which neither allowed.
compose: one call per project instead of one per sub-stack.
Yann Autissier