A copy under .variants/ exists to hold a content its primary does
not. 29 held bytes another file already carried, under a second or
third identity: msx.rom and MSX.ROM variants equal to
MSX_8020-20bios.rom, naomi2.zip.da79eca4 whose suffix named the
primary's sha1 rather than its own. dedup now removes such a copy,
keeping one when only variants hold the content. The LaserActive
PAC-S10 BIOS lived only under .variants/ while RetroBat names it
without a hash; it moves beside its siblings.
disksys.rom non-Rev1 variant (SHA256 fdc1a76e, ares-compatible)
from Myrient No-Intro. GameCube dsp_rom.bin + dsp_coef.bin real
hardware dumps (adler32 match Dolphin) from Redump collection.
All placed as .variants/ — primaries unchanged.
add --emulator, --system, --standalone, --list-emulators, --list-systems
to verify.py and generate_pack.py. packs are RTU with data directories,
regional BIOS variants, and archive support.
validation: field per file (size, crc32, md5, sha1) with conflict
detection. by_path_suffix index in database.json for regional variant
resolution via dest_hint. restructure GameCube IPL to regional subdirs.
66 E2E tests, full pipeline verified.
Abdessamad Derraz