Does phosh really need wayland-protocols in depends?
... or can it just be a makedepends?
I don't see anything in the phosh code that would require the protocol XMLs at runtime. The Debian package spec and the OpenSUSE package spec don't list it as a runtime dependency. And anecdotally, I did a mv /usr/share/wayland-protocols{,.bak} on my postmarketOS Edge-using PinePhone and phosh still works.
The depends has been there since the APKBUILD was added, so there isn't a commit that added it later with a justification. (cc @PureTryOut )