I believe the intention was to move this into core. Looking at the layouts module it appears that the framework is in place to handle layouts but nothing is there for creating an admin like in panels. I'm starting to think that an admin UI will not be part of core considering API freeze. Though that would be a tragedy. Perhaps they are delegating that to the spark initiative or something. Some information on the status/plan to create a layout builder and admin UI for launching pages like panels did would be appreciated. I could have swore from the wireframes this was planned to be part of Drupal 8 core.
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I believe the intention was
I believe the intention was to move this into core. Looking at the layouts module it appears that the framework is in place to handle layouts but nothing is there for creating an admin like in panels. I'm starting to think that an admin UI will not be part of core considering API freeze. Though that would be a tragedy. Perhaps they are delegating that to the spark initiative or something. Some information on the status/plan to create a layout builder and admin UI for launching pages like panels did would be appreciated. I could have swore from the wireframes this was planned to be part of Drupal 8 core.
The innitiative was called
The innitiative was called SCOTCH i believe, and it has been moved to 9.x:
https://drupal.org/node/1818142
In there you can find a lot of info and links to relevant issues if you are interested in seeing what got in and what didn't.
So that begs the original
So that begs the original question, will Panels functionality be available for Drupal 8?
Still depends
Panels slightly depends on http://dgo.to/layout module and https://drupal.org/node/1875974 that could be re-used for panel display
Page manager conversion happens in https://drupal.org/sandbox/eclipsegc/2158511