What @Intel_Peter suggests is correct, the initial 'mode' of a pin is pretty undefined behaviour and the only way to be certain is to set it at boot. Setting it early in the boot process would be ok as long as you set owner to false otherwise you'll unexport it and probably will loose the initial state (though I haven't checked).
Even if we gave you call that would give you a context and set the dir it wouldn't actually happen at the same time, it would still cause a transition :/