K8s: deployment valueFrom secretKeyRef optional if the secret is not present

We’ve recently introduced a new secret into our k8s environments. Due to the helm chart being shared but the secret being set at different stages, we needed to have the deployment not complaining if the secret wasn’t set. The solution was using the optional keyword.

- name: ENV_NAME
  valueFrom:
    secretKeyRef:
      name: <secrets name>
      key: <secrets key>
      optional: true

I see the same answer on StackOverflow with more details.