xinput list shows a "xwayland-pointer" device but not my real devices and what to do about it

TLDR: If you see devices like "xwayland-pointer" show up in your xinput list output, then you are running under a Wayland compositor and debugging/configuration with xinput will not work.

For many years, the xinput tool has been a useful tool to debug configuration issues (it's not a configuration UI btw). It works by listing the various devices detected by the X server. So a typical output from xinput list under X could look like this:

:: whot@jelly:~> xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=22   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                     id=23   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ELAN Touchscreen                          id=20   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Lid Switch                                id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                    id=24   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Alas, xinput is scheduled to go the way of the dodo. More and more systems are running a Wayland session instead of an X session, and xinput just doesn't work there. Here's an example output from xinput list under a Wayland session:

$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                     id=2 [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer               id=4 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ xwayland-pointer:13                      id=6 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ xwayland-relative-pointer:13             id=7 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                    id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard              id=5 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ xwayland-keyboard:13                     id=8 [slave  keyboard (3)]

As you can see, none of the physical devices are available, the only ones visible are the virtual devices created by XWayland. On a Wayland session, the X server doesn't have access to the physical devices. Instead, it talks via the Wayland protocol to the compositor. This image from the Wayland documentation shows the architecture:

In the above graphic, devices are known to the Wayland compositor (1), but not to the X server. The Wayland protocol doesn't expose physical devices, it merely provides a 'pointer' device, a 'keyboard' device and, where available, a touch and tablet tool/pad devices (2). XWayland wraps these into virtual devices and provides them via the X protocol (3), but they don't represent the physical devices.

This usually doesn't matter, but when it comes to debugging or configuring devices with xinput we run into a few issues. First, configuration via xinput usually means changing driver-specific properties but in the XWayland case there is no driver involved - it's all handled by libinput inside the compositor. Second, debugging via xinput only shows what the wayland protocol sends to XWayland and what XWayland then passes on to the client. For low-level issues with devices, this is all but useless.

The takeaway here is that if you see devices like "xwayland-pointer" show up in your xinput list output, then you are running under a Wayland compositor and debugging with xinput will not work. If you're trying to configure a device, use the compositor's configuration system (e.g. gsettings). If you are debugging a device, use libinput-debug-events. Or compare the behaviour between the Wayland session and the X session to narrow down where the failure point is.