Set COMPOSE_FILE in .env not possible?

[tombreit]

Dear all,

Basically, I want to keep the container-related files (eg. container-compose.yml, Containerfile) bundled in one directory (here: <repo_root>/container/) as much as possible.

Currently, however, this does not seem to be possible in my setup where I set the COMPOSE_FILE in my .env. I've prepared a minimal repository: https://github.com/tombreit/podmancompose-hello-world

└─ $ ▶ cat .env 
COMPOSE_FILE=container/container-compose.yml
└─ $ ▶ podman-compose up
podman-compose version: 1.0.6
['podman', '--version', '']
using podman version: 4.3.1
no compose.yaml, docker-compose.yml or container-compose.yml file found, pass files with -f

How do I get podman-compose to have only the .env file in the repository root and other container-related files in <repo_root>/container?

I know that I can set the compose file on the command line (-f, --file), but it would be nice if I could set this via .env.

Thank you very much for any hint or tip,
Thomas