The NMConnectionSection class is used - surprise - to manage a
list of related connections. And while the presentation of VPN
items is slightly different from connections associated with
devices (switches vs. ornaments), it makes perfect sense for
the VPN section to share the nitty-gritty with the base class.
But…
Right now it is perfectly fine for NMConnectionSection to be
used both as a child element in a device section, and as toplevel
item of the VPN section. Any nesting of sections is entirely
transparent to the user, and all connection sections appear as
submenu items in the toplevel menu.
That won't work for quick settings.
There's no PopoverMenuSection that allows invisible grouping, so
adding items dynamically would either need to happen at the end,
or require some tricky cross-component code to impose a particular
order.
And last but not least, quick toggles are very much unsuited for
a potentially large number of items. The whole point is to provide
quick direct access to system features, not to compete with menus
over the number of items they can hold.
That is, we need to get from the current state where each device
appears as a toplevel item, to a state where we have one quick
toggle for each device type plus one for VPN.
The decoupled VPN section still behaves largely as it did as a
subclass, with the notable difference that it no longer uses
a submenu item, so all VPN connections now appear at the toplevel.
Part-of: <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/2407>
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