make it possible for libmutter users to implement their own wayland protocols
citing @jadahl in #973 (closed): First, a GNOME Shell using a Wayland client to implement the panel etc, would not use layer shell, it'd use a private protocol that it has full control over, similar to the desktop shell in weston. It wouldn't be intended to be a shell client that could be run on other compositors but itself. There really isn't any reason why it'd use a third party protocol for this, as it'd just complicate things, without providing any benefit.
For mutter, we don't want to support arbitrary third party panels etc, as that is not how GNOME is designed to work, so it's not the right place for this either.
What can be done, however, is to make it possible for libmutter users, including GNOME Shell, to implement their own Wayland protocols. That way some compositor that wants to enable the user to plug in whatever panel, notification popup provider, etc it wants, can implement whatever protocol would be necessary for doing so.
There is already one MR that is a step in that direction (!754 (merged)).
other references:
- gnome-shell#1141 (closed) - to support swaylock
- https://github.com/swaywm/swaylock/issues/69 - swaylock issue that it does not work on gnome