Cannot change data dir location from ~/.fn to somewhere outside of my home folder

Hi everyone,

I'm running into an issue when trying to start the fn server. I have manually installed fn by downloading the binary from the GitHub release page and placing it into a local folder that is on my PATH. This works fine:

❯ fn --version
fn version 0.6.26

However, I cannot start the fn server:

❯ fn start --log-level DEBUG
2023/08/07 08:35:20 ¡¡¡ 'fn start' should NOT be used for PRODUCTION !!! see https://github.com/fnproject/fn-helm/
docker: Error response from daemon: error while creating mount source path '/<redacted>/home/pfaion/.fn/iofs': mkdir /<redacted>/home/pfaion/.fn: permission denied.
2023/08/07 08:35:20 Error: processed finished with error exit status 126

I am working on a machine where my home directory is mounted via AFS with Kerberos authentication. I'm not entirely sure, but it might be that whatever happens when I use fn start doesn't have access to my home folder, since it doesn't use Kerberos. I would be fine using a different directory for the fn configuration, outside of my home folder. But I couldn't find an option to configure this.

Is this a known issue and/or do you have any suggestions for how to work around it?

There seem to be traces for such an option in the code, but I'm not sure if this is usable?

cli/commands/start.go

Lines 72 to 76 in 06e5e0d

    
           if c.String("data-dir") != "" { 
        
           	fnDir = c.String("data-dir") 
        
           } else { 
        
           	fnDir = filepath.Join(home, ".fn") 
        
           }

I don't know go and I couldn't figure out how to use something like a --data-dir argument. It would always give me a usage error.

Looks like the cli argument was dropped in a re-organization commit, I assume by mistake?
f83f292#diff-63a7ad8e7bd042aa25c04ff627b2d29e0a8a949bb563e9467ae69e1b22d150b9L39-L42

Is nobody maintaining this repo? Pinging @carimura and @denismakogon as you seem to be the only active people associated with the https://github.com/fnproject project page (sorry for the noise in case you are not responsible for this repo). Is fnproject still actively maintained, or is it dead?

I'd create a PR myself, but even the contribution "workflow" is broken. The docs mention that I should sign a CLA, but the link is broken. See #672

Hi we're no longer involved with the project, sorry!

	if c.String("data-dir") != "" {
	fnDir = c.String("data-dir")
	} else {
	fnDir = filepath.Join(home, ".fn")
	}