bug: --user-data-dir is not respected via BDG_CHROME_FLAGS and --chrome-flags

[3dyuval]

Currently CLI option -u, --user-data-dir - has default ~/.bdg/chrome-profile (line 52 in start.ts) that overrides Chrome flags passed via BDG_CHROME_FLAGS

Possible solutions:
Remove -u option entirely. Or make BDG_CHROME_FLAGS or --chrome-flags override this default.

What do you think?

[szymdzum]

Investigated and fixed in #220.

Root cause: launcher.ts always fell back to getPersistentUserDataDir() (→ ~/.bdg/chrome-profile) when options.userDataDir was undefined, even if --user-data-dir=... was present in chromeFlags. chrome-launcher then emits its own --user-data-dir=<default> into Chrome's argv (see node_modules/chrome-launcher/dist/chrome-launcher.js:120), followed by the user's flags (line 124), so Chrome received two --user-data-dir switches with unreliable precedence. On top of that, launcher.ts:107-119 mkdirSync'd the default profile directory even when the user supplied an override.

Approach chosen (the reporter's second suggestion): keep -u for discoverability and make --chrome-flags / BDG_CHROME_FLAGS override the default. The fix extracts --user-data-dir from the merged flag list in buildSessionOptions, promotes it to the canonical userDataDir field, and removes it from chromeFlags so Chrome gets exactly one --user-data-dir. Precedence: -u > --chrome-flags / BDG_CHROME_FLAGS > default.

Removing -u entirely (the first suggestion) would be a breaking change and less discoverable, so I skipped that.

Verified end-to-end with headless Chrome:

• BDG_CHROME_FLAGS="--user-data-dir=/tmp/X" → /tmp/X used, ~/.bdg/chrome-profile no longer created.
• --chrome-flags="--user-data-dir=/tmp/X" → same.
• -u /tmp/A --chrome-flags="--user-data-dir=/tmp/B" → /tmp/A used (precedence honored).
• No flags → ~/.bdg/chrome-profile preserved as default.