As suggested in IRC, attached is a patch against the svn repo that
fixes the issue.
Pietro
diff --git a/debian/patches/09_fix_plugin_load_segfault.patch b/debian/patches/09_fix_plugin_load_segfault.patch
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e527f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debian/patches/09_fix_plugin_load_segfault.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+Description: fix segfault when loading plugins which extend menus
+ This patch integrates upstream commits
+ f4ecdcb8807fec2594f62bf7a7f179063f31e41b
+ and
+ 3bdfa5764deb9909dae9ef041a7e9b6d6297341a
+ The latter is only a style fix, but will make merging new upstream release
+ straightforward.
+Author: Pietro Battiston <m...@pietrobattiston.it>
+Bug-Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/770153
+Origin: upstream, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=737781
+Bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=737781
+Forwarded: not-needed
+Last-Update: 2016-11-30
+
+---
+--- gedit-3.22.0.orig/gedit/gedit-app.c
++++ gedit-3.22.0/gedit/gedit-app.c
+@@ -1712,6 +1712,11 @@ find_extension_point_section (GMenuModel
+
+ subsection = g_menu_model_get_item_link (model, i, G_MENU_LINK_SECTION);
+
++ if (subsection == NULL)
++ {
++ subsection = model;
++ }
++
+ j_items = g_menu_model_get_n_items (subsection);
+
+ for (j = 0; j < j_items && !section; j++)
diff --git a/debian/patches/series b/debian/patches/series
index 766e40c..f703d0b 100644
--- a/debian/patches/series
+++ b/debian/patches/series
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
01_gedit-bugreport-location.patch
03_no_gnu_gettext.patch
08_multiarch_fallback.patch
+09_fix_plugin_load_segfault.patch
