(Btw @Heliosurge I think this was brought up earlier):
It’s obvious that the topic has now completely veered off course, as always happens in any thread that goes against the grain. I don’t even intend to discuss the issue of using a theme component, but thanks to everyone anyway.
How did it veer off track? You asked a question and people expressed their opinions. Looks completely on topic to me?
You have all the info you need now to implement whatever setup you want?
I agree somewhat with OP that the “opinions” started to slide into “ridicule OP for what he wants”.
I don’t think this needs to be debated further. So unless someone has another solution to contribute to this topic, we can end the discussion here imo.
I do agree that some of the posts have unneeded aggressiveness.
I only mentioned a TC in regards to your adding a button to the home page. This has already been demonstrated by several components. If it is not a security issue a TC is the way to go.
Though I myself would be interested in what issues you have with Themes & Theme components? Plugins are more for security and things that cannot be accomplished within a TC - like changing how core functions. If your more comfortable we could discuss this in a friendly pm.
Another benefit of the TC is you could edit your code when needed within site web UI.
The problem I see with plugin route is that even official plugins merged in core still use Git to update the plugins & discourse itself.
You can use the volume support on the app.yml to mount a folder on the host to the plugins folder on the container.