Well, I decided to cross my fingers and try again today. First, I ensured the source vault was up to date since the issue causes corruption and copied the virtual hard drive so I can revert if needed.   I also removed open-vm-tools in case that was causing an issue.  Rebooted.   Went ahead and let the system update all, rebooted.  Opened Code::Blocks and my project.   Added new library needed and went to build, Code::Blocks went away, saw some garbage flash where the Window tab would be, then a popup about Plasma crashing.   I then submitted a report (but no place to type in what I was doing even though checked the box).   I tried opening Code::Blocks again, wouldn't open.   I then rebooted again, now Code::Blocks opens, but can't open the project.   So I go to my source vault and says to files were modified, I compared and sure enough it's full of garbage, I mean the entire thing.  Here's just an example of the header of the .cbp file:

Original:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<CodeBlocks_project_file>
    <FileVersion major="1" minor="6" />
    <Project>
        <Option title="theapp" />
        <Option pch_mode="2" />
        <Option compiler="gcc" />
        <Build>
            <Target title="English-GUI-Debug">
(... rest good ..)

Now the modified file:

: rtl-sdr
Multi-Arch: same
Tag: role::shared-lib
Section: libs
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/DEBIAN/main/r/rtl-sdr/librtlsdr0_0.6.0-3_i386.deb
Size: 33188
MD5sum: d5799384f8cd3990d7f4188e018b3d19
SHA256: 356e865c0b811314001bc2bb4fcb31f5b52eae6b4a16d77c8ee048dea0b50251

Package: librtmidi-dev
Version: 4.0.0-1
Installed-Size: 185
Maintainer: Debian Multimedia Maintainers <debian-multimedia@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Depends: libasound2-dev, libjack-dev, librtaudio-dev, librtmidi5 (= 4.0.0-1)
Homepage: https://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/
Description: C++ library for realtime MIDI input/ouput (development files)
Description-md5: 54fd0b82fc9ca8bd591d66ee5342b772
Source: rtmidi
(... and on and on .. )

There were two modified files, the 2 project files (.cbp) I updated (If I update any other file, they will corrupt too).   It uses shared folders to a drive that is a DriveCrypt container.   This setup has been this way for years, debian first, then on to Devuan which is what I currently use.

I'm currently using VirtualBox 7.1.10 x64 on Win10 x64 Pro.  Latest extensions are installed (I didn't have to reinstall after the upgrade).

So something in the update is causing issues, I couldn't tell you what update I'm on other than Devuan Chimaera.

So I guess I'm stuck.  I now will restore those project files and the .vmdk file and I'll be able to work just fine, but those 400+ updates I don't dare do.

Thanks.