Release DataFusion 44.0.0

[alamb]

Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge?

Tracking ticket for next release, also a place to track desired inclusions

Last release was https://crates.io/crates/datafusion/43.0.0 November 8th, 2024 so next major release would be around December 8, 2024

Prior release tickets:

• 43.0.0 Release DataFusion 43.0.0 #12470

Items to fix before release

(please update or post in comments)

[alamb]

I would love to get this one in:

• Perf: Allow User defined functions to potentially reuse their argument arrays (to avoid new allocations) #13516

Some things to highlight (that are already merged)

• Support vectorized append and compare for multi group by #12996 from @Rachelint as well

[alamb]

Also this hopefully:

• Add SessionConfig reference to ScalarFunctionArgs #13519

[alamb]

@Omega359 and @andygrove suggested #13525 (comment) that for this release we

we file tickets as part of every release to test DF with latest versions of common external dependencies (datafusion-python, iceberg, lance, delta, etc) as part of the gating criteria for a release. Perhaps this would be as simple as changing the DF version in those projects and running their test suite. Any blockers that are found in DF have tickets filed and are fixed, other blockers in the respective projects have tickets filed in those projects

Perhaps for 44.0.0 we can try with own subprojects (Ballista, Comet, DF Python, DF Ray)