ipc has no good way to reorganize containers

[Hippo0o]

my main goal is to move a container from anywhere in the workspace back to workspace level but:

• move container to workspace does nothing when same workspace
• [con_id=x] mark --add a does not work on workspace and so move container to mark x can't be used like it worked in i3
• containers can't be moved to ancestors
• using directional move makes it way too complex

my use case: auto layout master stack

problem when: layout T[h|v] and window in h gets closed or moved so T[v] needs become T[h|v]

in i3:

• i moved last focused in T[v] to workspace container which made it T[v|h] if v only had 1 container, it ends here with T[h]
• then move v to workspace container which made it T[h|v]

in sway:

• workspace is not a container, so it can't be marked nor can a container be moved to workspace level
• if i go with T[h[h|v]] to workaround this, i can't move v to T[h] because moving to ancestor is not possible

proposal (either):

1. make move to workspace also move the container back to workspace level
2. make workspace behave like a container again which includes moving to it from descendants
3. always make a default layout container and allow moving to ancestor
4. allow moving to ancestor

[rpigott]

Can you clarify how sway's behavior differs from i3 here? It's easiest if you have a simple reproducer example, like

1. initial layout
2. some swaymsg/i3-msg commands
3. result layout in i3 and sway that differs

[Hippo0o]

with a layout like this: its either W[H|V[H|H]] or W[H[H|V[H|H]]]

W: workspace
H: horizontal container
V: vertical container
H[H|H]: horizontal container with 2 horizontal child containers

scenario 1: W[H|V[H|H]]

in i3:

i3-msg [con_id="id of workspace container"] mark target
i3-msg [con_id="window with focus in screenshot"] move to mark target

W[H|V[H|H]] --> W[H|V[H]|H]

in sway:

workspace can't be marked as it explicitly is not a container.

scenario 2: W[H[H|V[H|H]]]

in i3:

i3-msg [con_id="id of W[H], basically first horizontal container in workspace tree"] mark target
i3-msg [con_id="window with focus in screenshot"] move to mark target

W[H[H|V[H|H]]] --> W[H[H|V[H]|H]]

in sway:

swaymsg [con_id="id of W[H], basically first horizontal container in workspace tree"] mark target
swaymsg [con_id="window with focus in screenshot"] move to mark target

does mark but not move bcs W[H[H|V[H|H]]] is ancestor of W[H[H|V[H|H]]]

sway/sway/commands/move.c

Line 236 in ee7668c

|| container_has_ancestor(destination, container)) {

[ccdunder]

Related: #6818 and #6835