Hello,
GNOME 42.beta is now available. It also marks the start of the UI, feature and API freezes (collectively known as The Freeze). String announcement is also in effect now, in advance of the String freeze which starts next Saturday. If you’d like to target the GNOME 42 platform, this is the best time to start testing your apps or extensions.
You can use the 42beta branch of the flatpak runtimes, which is now available on Flathub beta.
This release adds libadwaita, which contains building blocks for modern GNOME applications. It also adds gtksourceview version 5 and libsoup version 3.
Clutter libraries, which were deprecated in GNOME 41, have been removed. gtksourceview version 4 (for use with gtk 3) and libsoup version 2.4 are still in the runtimes but they are deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
An installer image is also available for testing and porting extensions
https://os.gnome.org/download/42.beta/gnome_os_installer_42.beta.iso
This is meant to be installed in a virtual machine with EFI support (such as the GNOME Boxes version available on Flathub). You can also try to install it on bare metal but be warned that hardware support is very limited.
If you want to compile GNOME 42.beta yourself, you can use the official BuildStream project snapshot:
https://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/42.beta/gnome-42.beta.tar.xz
The list of updated modules and changes is available here:
https://download.gnome.org/core/42/42.beta/NEWS
The source packages are available here:
https://download.gnome.org/core/42/42.beta/sources/
WARNING!
This is beta quality software. This release is intended for GNOME
developers and beta testers. For more information about GNOME 41,
including the full schedule, please see our wiki page:
https://www.gnome.org/start/unstable
Cheers,
Abderrahim Kitouni
GNOME Release Team