btcd creates home directory unconditionally despite --configfile --datadir --logdir cli arguments and rpc disabled

[lestephane]

I'm trying to run btcd as an unprivileged user who does not have a HOME directory (ie the home in /etc/passwd points to a /non-existing-location), and can only read and write to the necessary files btcd.conf, data/ directory and log/ directory. I have not turned on rpc in btcd.conf, so I don't care to define the RPC key and cert file, but I could down the line, making the use of defaultHomeDir completely redundant.

line 516 in config.go v0.20.0-beta creates the home unconditionally.

err = os.MkdirAll(defaultHomeDir, 0700)

Have you considered adding a --homedir directory cli argument, that I could point to an existing empty, non-writable directory for my use case?