I've stopped using bare env files on the repo, I'll create an env file that populates values from a secrets manager and check this file info git. Or throw the env file info a parent dir because they're probably user specific anyway.

Having an env file that needs to exist but isn't checked into source control creates "works on my machine" issues as well, just load them from the environment and provide a programmatic way of setting the environment (or stop pretending they're part of the project and use direnv/Mise to setup the env)