Ok, I ended up solving this myself with option 2), I made a script that "decrypts" and "encrypts" the file on demand so it can be edited manually. For it to work, the encyption/password in Eddie must be set to "Plain (no password asked)" (at least temporarily, after writing it back to the source, password protection can be turned back on).
In case anybody else ever needs it, I attached the script (you need python and pycryptodome preinstalled).
python eddie_profile.py decrypt --help
python eddie_profile.py decrypt --outfile Eddie.xml
# edit the XML, then make sure Eddie is not running before doing
python eddie_profile.py encrypt --help
python eddie_profile.py encrypt --infile Eddie.xml
eddie_profile.py.txt