Programmatic output identification with Wayland

[Philipp Kerling <pkerling casix org>]

Hi mutter developers,

I'm Philipp, studying Computer Engineering and currently working on
getting Wayland support (back) in the open-source Kodi media center
application [1] as Google Summer of Code project [2] [3].

I have encountered the problem that it is difficult to programmatically
(re)identify outputs (connectors, monitors) with Wayland similar to
what was possible with RANDR. Kodi needs this functionality to allow
the user to select a display that Kodi will be shown on in full-screen
mode (like an external TV screen).
I started a discussion about this on wayland-devel [4] and it does seem
like some sort of Wayland protocol extension(s) will be needed that
allow the compositor to provide visual hints on the outputs for initial
selection and give applications enough information to later reidentify
the output, but the exact details are not clear yet.

Therefore I would like to ask you whether you have already thought
about this issue, maybe have something planned and/or would be
interested in participating in the discussion. It would be very
important to have a potential extension also implemented in the major,
so that is why I am contacting you at this early stage.

Best regards,
Philipp Kerling

[1] http://kodi.tv/
[2] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/projects/#4913542374359040
[3] http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=309254&pid=2552143#pid2552143
[4] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2017-May/034083.html