Rofi 2.0 crashes on Debian 13 GNOME Shell 48 (Wayland) due to missing layer shell support

[blueray453]

I compiled Rofi 2.0.0 from source on Debian 13 running GNOME Shell 48.4 with all dependencies, including Wayland and GTK 4:

sudo apt install libwayland-dev wayland-protocols libgtk-4-dev libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-dev
meson setup build -Dwayland=enabled
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

When I run Rofi in my GNOME Shell Wayland session, i get the following error:

$ rofi --version

(process:107621): Wayland-ERROR **: 20:59:14.050: Rofi on wayland requires support for the layer shell protocol

It appears that GNOME Shell (Mutter) currently does not provide the layer shell protocol (zwlr_layer_shell_v1) that Rofi relies on to run natively on Wayland. Because of this, even basic Rofi commands crash when executed in GNOME Shell’s Wayland session.

Is it possible to run Rofi natively on Wayland in GNOME Shell, or is layer shell support strictly required from the compositor?

What might be the solution here?

[DaveDavenport]

• Wayland-ERROR: Rofi on wayland requires support for the layer shell protocol #2216
• [BUG] Rofi not starting on gnome (wayland) #2214