Is there a way of adding custom keyboard layouts without having to edit /usr or any other part of the rootfs?
imo GNOME should just also look for definitions in ~/.local/share/X11/xkb/ in addition to the usual /usr/share/X11/xkb/.
I have made a custom layout with files in ~/.config/xkb/. I don’t use it now, and the computer it was on has been erased, but I followed these instructions.
(I’m not sure how much this directly relates to GNOME, xkb or the distro. I was using Ubuntu/GNOME FWIW.)
Wow, this is almost exactly what I imagined and it works. Thanks! Just rsync -rL /usr/share/X11/xkb ~/.config/ and make your changes there.
EDIT: I now realize it only works on wayland, not Xorg for some reason.
Certainly could be. I never tried it with X11 myself.