Personally after using docker compose since it came out I’m excited to see the evolution of local Kubernetes development. I’d scrap even dealing with trying to make something as limited as docker compose do what you want. I’d focus on moving towards local Kubernetes development.

This will bring you closer to the deployment stack if you are deploying to Kubernetes. Then also let you leverage tools like kustomize to dry out your configurations.

There are some great projects like tilt, devspace, skaffold, etc that help facilitate deving on a local or remote cluster.

As far as configuration management that can be as simple as cascading kustomize configs or helm. Then leveraging something like vault. The point really is, if you start with Kubernetes you have way more flexibility with tooling and options to do whatever the heck you want.

Shameless plug I recently started a series on local Kubernetes development. It covers some of this with tilt and more. If you would like a specific thing covered here I can add an installment to it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nj55RDVwrIE&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE