Why does this.......

[rich2005]

....Feel like BS  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/work_items/16348

It is an improvement they say,   just adds another operation and complication to what previously existed.

Edit: If you get frustrated by those (fx) in a layer, attached a one line plugin that applies (merges) any (fx) 

Unzip. Goes in user plugins Find it in  Tools -> kill-nde

[MrsP-from-C]

It's amazing how quick things get closed on the bug tracker.
Decision made by just one person, as so often.
It usually takes longer to write all the stuff down for them then what it takes him to close everything because "not relevant".
Excuse me for the rant.

[CmykStudent_]

rich2005: Yeah, I figured there would be issues when we added those conditions for non-raster layers.
There were long-time bug reports about people inadvertantly rasterizing layers by painting on them and other such things. During 3.2's development, we standardized "non-raster" conditions for text, vector, and link layers, so all three share common code for preventing destructive actions unless rasterized. 

The likely solution is to allow the bump mapping filter to be non-destructive as well, so there's no need to rasterize. We need to be able to serialize "aux" inputs (the layer parameters) to do this though. Jehan's planning a new XCF format for 3.4 that uses GEGL Buffers directly (which will also allow for fast auto-saving), so hopefully we can work through a solution for the "aux" inputs through that.