I guess I'm also not seeing what the exact problem is. The project root is crowded, yes, now this suggests making a different directory crowded. The messiness is shifted.
The original Greek prefix is a preposition that means “with”, “among”, or “beside”. Doesn’t seem like a stretch that config files are a type of metafile.
Even .config would be better
The truth is, it's not that the current project roots are a mess. It's that there's a complete and holistic category of file that is being kept in the root of projects, and putting them in a directory dedicated to that category is utterly sensible. Every other category is kept in a dedicated namespace in the file structure, why should config files be the exception?
I agree with the GP about bikeshedding. A debate about this would never end.
Which is why the whole thing needs to be nipped in the bud.
For one thing .meta would already be a dotfile so .dotfile/.env would be redundant. But that's called dotenv! What's it going to be named now? Or maybe that wouldn't be included. But it's on the list in the tweet linked to in the article.
Tell this to the guy who started it by suggesting files should be moved in the first place.
Right now any codebase can put them wherever it wants. If you suggest to standardize things you damn better get the whole idea including naming right.
There's a reason Linux doesn't just stuff everything into /
.project - Since these files typically "configure a project", a dot project directory could hold all of those files.
.meta - Agree its not super descriptive, which is fine, but more precision could be good.
.config - Problem with this is "configuration for what?", the project or the application?
Or simply
tools