Material Shell is EOL -- can we get the bar/workspace behavior separated into an lightweight plugin?

[jessedhillon]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Material Shell has been de facto end of life'd. The developer is working on something else and won't make the extension compatible with GNOME 45. This is sad, because Material Shell has some solid ideas, and the best implementation on GNOME of certain tiling and navigation behaviors. I personally find that a lightweight extension which kept these features would probably be good enough, if laid over something like Pop Shell:

• top/side bars
• Super+W/S/A/D navigation scheme

Describe the solution you'd like
A build of Material Shell that strips out the tiling behaviors and only implements the top and side bars, and the window/workspace navigation shortcuts

Describe alternatives you've considered
I wish @PapyElGringo the best of luck in creating a new WM, but I probably will not use something that isn't at least GNOME-based because there's too many conveniences baked in.

[PapyElGringo]

I've made the gnome 45 compatibility update at #984

And the project is still open to external contributions 😁

[jessedhillon]

Thanks @PapyElGringo -- I appreciate that you're developing in the open and that external contributors are welcome. I was a subscriber to your Patreon until very recently, and would gladly support you monetarily if you'd focus on this project instead. I unfortunately do not have the time to dig into the source, but I think what you've made is superior to Pop Shell (what I've switched to) and would love to keep using it if there was active development

[PapyElGringo]

@jessedhillon I'm very grateful for your support for past few years and I wrote a letter to try to give more context of the motivation behind the recent changes.

I hope it will change your perception of my recent decisions

[jessedhillon]

Thanks @PapyElGringo, I signed up to be a contributor. I'm happy to follow the new project, but in my experience with e.g. Sway, a lack of deep integration with basic desktop amenities that GNOME provides, severely degrades the experience even for a power user. I hope you'll follow a path that doesn't reinvent or discard some of these basic features, while gaining a more stable base on which to develop your insights around window navigation.