Why does my deployment restart with the old configMap after a kubectl patch?

I have two Kubernetes configMaps, but my deployment always uses the one defined with mock-url-config. Below are my configMaps and the deployment YAML:

YAMLCopied
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: mock-url-config
data:
  base-url: "http://api.infra.com:80/Test"

---

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: actual-url-config
data:
  base-url: "http://api.infra.com:80"

---

# File : deployment.yml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: test-api
  annotations:
    kubernetes.twilio.com/service-name: test-api
spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    ......
    ......
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: test-sa-account
      containers:
        - name: test-api
          env:
            - name: API_BASE_URL
              valueFrom:
                configMapKeyRef: // USING THE CONFIGMAP VALUE
                  name: mock-url-config
                  key: base-url
          image: ......
    ..........

After running the deployment, the test-api container starts using mock-url-config. Once testing is complete, I run a Kubernetes job to patch the deployment so that the pod picks up the new actual-url-config. The job is defined as follows:

YAMLCopied
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: apply-actual-url
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/hook: PostSync
    argocd.argoproj.io/hook-delete-policy: BeforeHookCreation
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "1"
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: test-sa-account
      containers:
        - name: kubectl
          image: <image>
          command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
          args:
            - |
              kubectl patch deployment test-api -n test-ns \
                --patch '{"spec": {"template": {"spec": {"containers": [{"name": "test-api", "env": [{"name": "BASE_URL", "valueFrom": {"configMapKeyRef": {"name": "actual-url-config", "key": "base-url"}}}]}]}}}}' && \
              sleep 5 && \
              kubectl rollout restart deployment test-api -n test-ns
          volumeMounts:
            - name: config-volume
              mountPath: /config
          ......
      volumes:
        - name: config-volume
          configMap:
            name: actual-url-config

When I run this job, the patch is applied and the pods restart, but they still reference mock-url-config. I suspect the issue might be related to a mismatch in the environment variable names: the deployment uses API_BASE_URL while the patch updates a variable called BASE_URL.

What I’ve tried:

• Patching and restarting the deployment via a job
• Verifying that the patch command executes and the rollout restart is triggered

Desired outcome:
I want the pods, after being restarted, to use the values from actual-url-config. Any insights on why the patch doesn't change the configMap reference would be appreciated.