The new XWAYLAND extension is available

As of xorgproto 2022.2, we have a new X11 protocol extension. First, you may rightly say "whaaaat? why add new extensions to the X protocol?" in a rather unnecessarily accusing way, followed up by "that's like adding lipstick to a dodo!". And that's not completely wrong, but nevertheless, we have a new protocol extension to the ... [checks calendar] almost 40 year old X protocol. And that extension is, ever creatively, named "XWAYLAND".

If you recall, Xwayland is a different X server than Xorg. It doesn't try to render directly to the hardware, instead it's a translation layer between the X protocol and the Wayland protocol so that X clients can continue to function on a Wayland compositor. The X application is generally unaware that it isn't running on Xorg and Xwayland (and the compositor) will do their best to accommodate for all the quirks that the application expects because it only speaks X. In a way, it's like calling a restaurant and ordering a burger because the person answering speaks American English. Without realising that you just called the local fancy French joint and now the chefs will have to make a burger for you, totally without avec.

Anyway, sometimes it is necessary for a client (or a user) to know whether the X server is indeed Xwayland. Previously, this was done through heuristics: the xisxwayland tool checks for XRandR properties, the xinput tool checks for input device names, and so on. These heuristics are just that, though, so they can become unreliable as Xwayland gets closer to emulating Xorg or things just change. And properties in general are problematic since they could be set by other clients. To solve this, we now have a new extension.

The XWAYLAND extension doesn't actually do anything, it's the bare minimum required for an extension. It just needs to exist and clients only need to XQueryExtension or check for it in XListExtensions (the equivalent to xdpyinfo | grep XWAYLAND). Hence, no support for Xlib or libxcb is planned. So of all the nightmares you've had in the last 2 years, the one of misidentifying Xwayland will soon be in the past.