Announcement: https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gnome-44-released/14606
Release notes: https://release.gnome.org/44/

• Schedule: https://wiki.gnome.org/FortyFour
• Project: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/projects/53
• Hydra: https://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixpkgs/gnome (evaluations need to be triggered manually)
• Previous bump: GNOME 42 → 43 #182618
• Tool for reviewing changelogs: https://github.com/jtojnar/nonemast

How can you help

• Review unreviewed updates with https://github.com/jtojnar/nonemast

  1. Read the changelog for anything mentioning dependencies or anything else that could affect packaging
  2. Check the diff for changes in meson.build files (look especially for changes including dependency and for find_program functions)
  3. If there are packaging changes required, update the expression and commit changes as a fixup commit.
  4. Click “Mark as reviewed” button to create an empty review commit
  5. If you can, push your commits to this branch, otherwise Open a pull request against this branch.

• Create build fixes for packages that fail to build (same as steps 3–5 above)

• Pickup an issue from the TODO list and fix it

• Try running the GNOME config in a VM (e.g. with the config below, you can do nixos-rebuild build-vm -I nixos-config=gnome-config.nix -I nixpkgs=$PWD && ./result/bin/run-*-vm)

  Example VM config

  { pkgs, config, ... }: {
    environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
      gdb
      binutils # readelf
      file
      htop
      less
      ashpd-demo # Testing portals
      # For debug symbols
      glib
      gnome.gnome-session
      gnome.mutter
      gnome.gnome-shell
      packagekit
    ];
    # services.gnome.core-utilities.enable = false;
    # services.gnome.core-developer-tools.enable = true;
    # services.gnome.games.enable = true;
    services.fwupd.enable = true;
  
    environment.enableDebugInfo = true;
    services.xserver = {
      enable = true;
      # layout = "cz";
      # xkbVariant = "qwerty";
  
      displayManager.gdm = {
        enable = true;
        debug = true;
      };
      desktopManager.gnome = {
        enable = true;
        debug = true;
      };
    };
    services.openssh.enable = true;
  
    virtualisation.forwardPorts = [
      # forward local port 2222 -> 22, to ssh into the VM
      { from = "host"; host.port = 2222; guest.port = 22; }
    ];
  
    console.useXkbConfig = true;
    i18n = {
      defaultLocale = "en_GB.UTF-8";
    };
  
    programs.gpaste.enable = true;
  
    users.extraUsers.jtojnar = {
      isNormalUser = true;
      uid = 1000;
      extraGroups = [ "wheel" "networkmanager" ];
      password = "";
      openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDYbOlZydfRRCGCT08wdtPcpfSrgxMc6weDx3NcWrnMpVgxnMs3HozzkaS/hbcZUocn7XbCOyaxEd1O8Fuaw4JXpUBcMetpPXkQC+bZHQ3YsZZyzVgCXFPRF88QQj0nR7YVE1AeAifjk3TCODstTxit868V1639/TVIi5y5fC0/VbYG2Lt4AadNH67bRv8YiO3iTsHQoZPKD1nxA7yANHCuw38bGTHRhsxeVD+72ThbsYSZeA9dBrzACpEdnwyXclaoyIOnKdN224tu4+4ytgH/vH/uoUfL8SmzzIDvwZ4Ba2yHhZHs5iwsVjTvLe7jjE6I1u8qY7X8ofnanfNcsmz/ jtojnar@kaiser" ];
    };
  
    imports = [ <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/virtualisation/qemu-vm.nix> ];
    virtualisation.memorySize = 3 * 2048;
    virtualisation.diskSize = 28048;
    virtualisation.qemu.options = [ "-device intel-hda" "-device hda-duplex" ];
  
    environment.etc."modprobe.d/floppy.blacklist.conf".text = ''
      blacklist floppy
    '';
  }

• Try switching your system to this branch:

  • Pass -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/refs/heads/gnome.tar.gz flag to nixos-rebuild
  • With flakes, nix flake update --override-input nixpkgs github:NixOS/nixpkgs/gnome

• Comment with issues you found.

Main pain points

• GLib removed unmaintained slab allocator, which revealed ton of memory management issues.
  • If you are still on a system with GLib < 2.75.3, you can check if a program is affected with

    $ export G_SLICE=always-malloc
    $ some-application # does it crash now?

    or just set this globally in your nixos config

    {
      environment.sessionVariables."G_SLICE" = "always-malloc";
    }