It’s been a long time since I asked for any help in the open source community and I am thrilled(!) to discover very little has changed.
The first response I had was from someone with clearly good intentions but zero expertise.
The second response was somebody asking why I want to do it anyway.
I haven’t officially had the third response but I know that will be: the dev in charge of this element of the project has unilaterally decided not to maintain this functionality because basically said dev doesn’t need that functionality and/or has no way to test it. However, there is no public record or explanation for that decision so literally the only person that can even confirm that is the dev.
But the dev is only human and only has so much time they contribute to the project because, after all, they are a volunteer. So the chance of me actually getting a response from the dev are very low anyway and even lower when the answer is some version of “I can’t/won’t”, which no-one really likes to say.
However, with the benefit of knowledge from experience on my side, I have completely given up already, so I won’t be wasting any of my time, at least.