You're absolutely right! In Kubernetes, environment variables are handled at the deployment level through ConfigMaps and Secrets, not
  individual service .env files.

  Kubernetes approach:
  # k8s/configmap.yaml
  apiVersion: v1
  kind: ConfigMap
  metadata:
    name: media-analyzer-config
  data:
    DB_HOST: "postgres-service"
    HLS_BASE_URL: "http://nginx-hls-service"

  # k8s/deployment.yaml
  env:
  - name: DB_HOST
    valueFrom:
      configMapKeyRef:
        name: media-analyzer-config
        key: DB_HOST

  Better structure:
  - Development: Single .env for docker-compose
  - Production: K8s ConfigMaps/Secrets per environment
  - No service-specific .env files

  Recommended approach:

● Write(.env.development)
  ⎿  Wrote 8 lines to .env.development                     
     # Development environment variables for docker-compose
     DB_HOST=postgres
     DB_NAME=media_analyzer
     DB_USER=media_user
     DB_PASSWORD=media_pass
     RTMP_PORT=1935
     HLS_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8081
     DEBUG=1

● Then K8s handles it via:
  - k8s/base/configmap.yaml - Non-secret config
  - k8s/base/secret.yaml - Passwords, keys
  - k8s/overlays/staging/ - Staging overrides
  - k8s/overlays/production/ - Production overrides

  This way each deployment environment controls its own config, not the services themselves.