[a1rwulf]

I don't know the technical details of the code, but I suspect the main benefit of what a1rwulf has done is better for stability as Kodi is built around having an active display device on when using Kodi and from what I understand what this does is fool Kodi into thinking there is still a real display device connected when headless or the connected display is off, the headless patch discussed here is a more quick and dirty hack which is why it's never made it into the code.

My approach renders to an off screen target.
It's still a workaround but fits into the gbm code architecture.
Imho it's an "OK" solution (at least for my use case) until we have proper headless support.