A machine that instantiates a device loads the device's ROMs from <shortname>.zip (src/emu/device.cpp:140-152), and a missing required ROM stops that machine (romload.cpp:529-570, 667-671). The BIOS root scan never sees these sets. mame_hash_scraper --devices --listxml reads them from the -listxml of the release mame.yml pins, refuses another release, and cites each set at the ROM_START block holding its ROMs. The BIOS root merge also wrote refs without the upstream prefix and would have rewritten all 171 of them in mame.yml.
Profiles, the wiki, comments, docstrings, command output and schema descriptions carried em-dashes, clause-joining semicolons, unicode arrows, box-drawing banners and check-mark glyphs. Each sentence was rewritten rather than having its character swapped. Hashes, paths, source_ref values and every cited file:line are unchanged, which a comparison of each parsed profile against the previous revision confirms.
validate_pr comments now say PASS and FAIL in words, and source_ref values in a profile's structured blocks render as code. test_prose_style fails if any of these comes back, in tracked files or in the generated site.
generate_db wrote a database without the aliases of a profile it could not read, and the MAME and FBNeo refreshes passed without it. Each now names the file and exits non-zero.
A failed rev-parse in the MAME clone returned an empty commit, which
was cached for a day and let the merge advance the profile's version
and refs while its upstream pin stayed on the previous release. The
scrape now stops instead.
Recalbox compiles libretro/mame at 0.258 and 0.278 itself; typed
libretro, both profiles were resolved for every all_libretro platform
although the buildbot RetroArch installs from has neither. A profile
now names the platforms that build it (built_by), and is reached only
when a platform lists it by name.
Recalbox ships libretro/mame built at 0.258 and at 0.278, and no
profile described either release. mame_hash_scraper gains --release,
which reads the BIOS root sets at one mamedev tag and writes a profile
pinned to it; mame0258 and mame0278 are generated from it, every
source_ref anchored at its tag.
YAML 1.1 reads an unquoted 01 as the integer 1 and 81 as 81, so the
manager set stopped naming the file its driver opens and the API
published "cores": [2048] as a number where consumers match strings.
Ground truth from MAME 0.289 at the revision the profile cites:
src/mame/vtech/crvision.cpp:957 loads "01" and "23".
The root cause was the scraper: _hash_merge wrote these names through an
f-string, so quoting the profiles alone would be undone on the next
refresh. _yaml_scalar now quotes every name, archive and description it
writes.
Run ruff check --fix: remove unused imports (F401), fix f-strings
without placeholders (F541), remove unused variables (F841), fix
duplicate dict key (F601).
Run isort --profile black: normalize import ordering across all files.
Run ruff format: apply consistent formatting (black-compatible) to
all 58 Python files.
3 intentional E402 remain (imports after require_yaml() must execute
after yaml is available).
sparse clone upstream repos, parse BIOS root sets from C source,
cache as JSON, merge into emulator profiles with backup.
covers macro expansion, version detection, subset profile protection.
Abdessamad Derraz