If I check out the netatalk-4-1-0 tag, do meson compile -C build and meson install -C build, then start up the atalkd and netatalk services, everything works fine and clients can mount the server volumes with no problem. (This is on NetBSD.)
If I check out the netatalk-4-1-1 tag, or anything after that (including main), the same meson build appears to complete OK and the result of afpd -V and netatalk -V is the expected version matching that tag. The services start up fine and the netatalk server can be selected in the Chooser. But clients will hang at the point where an AFP volume is selected and the OK button is pressed.
Looking at the files which changed (git diff --name-only netatalk-4-1-0 netatalk 4-1-1), there were a couple of .c files which looked promising. I rolled each back, one by one, and rebuilt/restarted the services, but the post-4.1.0 servers still always cause my Mini vMac clients to hang.
Could it be the bdb lib path? Not sure. Will try rolling back the meson build file changes next.