Configuring different pod configuration for different environments (Kubernetes + Google Cloud or Minikube) - kubernetes

Question

I have a (containerized) web service talking to an external CloudSQL service in Google Cloud. I've used the sidecar pattern in which a Google Cloud SQL Proxy container is next to the web service and authenticates+proxies to the external CloudSQL service. This works fine. Let's call this Deployment "deployment-api" with containers "api" + "pg-proxy"
The problem occurs when I want to deploy the application on my local minikube cluster which needs to have different configuration due to the service talking to a local postgres server on my computer. If I deploy "deployment-api" as is to minikube, it tries to run the "pg-proxy" container which barfs and the entire pod goes into a crash loop. Is there a way for me to selectively NOT deploy "pg-proxy" container without having two definitions for the Pod, e.g., using selectors/labels? I do not want to move pg-proxy container into its own deployment.
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: deployment-api
namespace: ${MY_ENV}
labels:
app: api
env: ${MY_ENV}
spec:
replicas: ${REPLICAS}
selector:
matchLabels:
app: api
env: ${MY_ENV}
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: api
env: ${MY_ENV}
spec:
containers:
- name: pg-proxy
ports:
- containerPort: 5432
image: gcr.io/cloudsql-docker/gce-proxy:1.11
command: ["/cloud_sql_proxy",
"-instances=<redacted>:${MY_ENV}-app=tcp:5432",
"-credential_file=/secrets/cloudsql/${MY_ENV}-sql-credentials.json"]
securityContext:
runAsUser: 2 # non-root user
allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
volumeMounts:
- name: ${MY_ENV}-cloudsql-instance-credentials
mountPath: /secrets/cloudsql
readOnly: true
- name: api
image: ${DOCKER_IMAGE_PREFIX}api:${TAG}
imagePullPolicy: ${PULL_POLICY}
ports:
- containerPort: 50051
volumes:
- name: ${MY_ENV}-cloudsql-instance-credentials
secret:
secretName: ${MY_ENV}-cloudsql-instance-credentials

Answer 1

In raw Kubernetes means? No.
But I strongly encourage you to use Helm to deploy your application(s). With helm you can easily adapt manifest based on variables provided for each environment (or defaults). For example with variable postgresql.proxy.enabled: true in defaults and
{{- if .Values.postgresql.proxy.enabled }}
- name: pg-proxy
...
{{- end }}
in helm template you could disable this block completely on dev env by setting the value to false.