I usually do it that way, but you need to set the path to vm.args when calling rebar3 commands.
So, if vm.args is at config/vm.args (relative to current directory), you can run it with: env ERL_FLAGS="-args_file config/vm.args" rebar3 <command> ... (assuming you’re using some linux, not sure this would work on Windows)
EDIT: is there any way to force this config in some project-local configuration file? I understand you can’t set it from within rebar.config, because it needs to set a flag on BEAM itself, which is already running when processing rebar.config.