Version 46 was quietly rolled into the Windows 11 24H2 preview channel and Windows Server 2025 Cumulative Update 3. According to the release notes (KB5049876—later marked as "covert engineering change"), the major shifts include:
The "hot" designation explicitly means: This version supports live, in-memory patching of the DEP policy without rebooting or restarting shell processes. In previous versions (44, 45), updating DEP rules required a full system restart or, at minimum, an sfc /scannow followed by a shell restart.
With Version 46 Hot, Microsoft claims zero-downtime reconfiguration of DEP rules for running process trees.
For the uninitiated, shell-dep is a declarative dependency manager for POSIX-compliant shell scripts. Think of it as a hybrid between pip (for Python) and vcpkg (for C++), but designed exclusively for shell utilities like jq, curl, ffmpeg, rg, fd, and thousands of other CLI tools. shell dep version 46 hot
Instead of writing brittle which checks or embedding apt-get install commands in your scripts, shell-dep allows you to define a .shell-dep.toml file:
[requirements]
jq = ">=1.6"
rg = "14.0.0"
custom-tool = source = "github.com/user/tool", tag = "v2"
Then, running shell-dep ensure pulls the exact binaries (verified by SHA) into an isolated ./.shell_deps folder, which you can then prepend to your PATH.
The most critical dependency for GNOME Shell 46 is Mutter 46 (the window manager). Version 46 brought a major refactor of the renderer and input handling. Version 46 was quietly rolled into the Windows
The "hot" capability sounds like a benefit—and in many ways it is. Datacenter operators can update shell-level memory protections during peak hours. However, three major issues have emerged:
Previous versions of shell-dep relied on a cold filesystem cache. Every shell-dep ensure would hash the lockfile, check timestamps, and re-validate existing binaries. In large monorepos with 50+ dependencies, this could take 2–3 seconds.
Version 46 Hot introduces a daemon-less shared memory cache. The first time you run a command, it builds a hot manifest in /dev/shm (or a Windows equivalent). Subsequent runs are almost instantaneous. For the uninitiated, shell-dep is a declarative dependency
Benchmark:
For CI pipelines running hundreds of jobs, this translates directly into dollars saved.
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