Each manifest carries system_titles, the name the site prints for every system its files list (Sony PlayStation, not sony-playstation or psx), so the installer can show it. Older installers ignore the field.
Batocera, KNULLI, Recalbox, RetroBat and RetroDECK hand a libretro core <saves>/<system> at each launch. Each copy lands below every system that runs the core. EmuDeck keeps one unsorted saves/retroarch/saves. The unsupported platforms record why.
load_from: save_dir entries of a libretro build were left out of every
pack. They now go below the platform's save folder (registry
save_directory: RetroArch saves/, Lakka savefiles/, by core), the
manifest marks them root: save, and verify replays the same placement.
Platforms keeping saves per system or per game list them as omitted.
The install manifest marks each game data file "category": "game_data":
a platform entry only game data profile entries read, or a core file its
profile declares game data. Firmware carries no category. Every manifest
says "categorized": true so the installer can refuse an older list.
generate_pack.py --no-game-data cuts those files from the platform list
and the core profiles before the build, names each one with the cores that
read it as game data, and tags the pack _NoGameData through _narrowings.
verify.py and the pack check take the same cut, so --verify-packs and the
report describe the pack the builder wrote. Modes without a platform
(--emulator, --system alone, --from-md5) and --all-variants refuse it.
The builder keeps a held regional fallback when the requested file is
missing (since 2026-10-17), and the comment beside the manifest's
omissions still said the opposite. A file the builder holds but the
manifest cannot download sat in omitted_files counted unheld, so the
installer kept a fallback the pack drops. Such an omission now carries
held: true and narrow() counts it held, as the builder does.
The manifest now carries system_names, each system's native_system names from the platform's own file, and --system, its suggestions and --list-systems read them: --platform batocera --system psx installs sony-playstation.
RomM lists a platform's firmware folder without descending (base_handler.py:1002, recursive=False) and EmulatorJS writes the chosen file, or each zip member, under its bare name. 543 files of the RomM pack sat below a folder where no core could read them. The registry now marks RomM's folder flat, and such files are omitted with the reason below_platform_folder in the manifest and the installer.
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.
Manifests list each data directory's source archive and the hash of
every file; the installer rebuilds the tree from the archive and keeps
only the files whose hash matches.
The RetroArch list is folded for Windows and macOS. Its manifest
now carries the names a case-keeping directory also needs, and the
installer adds them after probing the BIOS directory.
Two builds of the same pack from the same inputs produced different
archives. Of 67 members, 65 were already identical: only README.txt
and manifest.json differed, both stamped with the wall clock by
writestr and the second carrying a generated timestamp. Generated
members now use the epoch the archive rebuilder already applies, and
the timestamp comes from the database snapshot the pack was built
from, so the same data yields the same bytes.
Install manifests skipped archived platforms, which is why RetroPie
had none; archived means upstream is no longer scraped, not that the
packs stopped shipping. A target-filtered manifest also had no record
of its filter beyond the filename, so it carries one the way a
region-filtered manifest already does.
JSON Schemas for the database, install and pack manifests, target
manifests, site API envelopes and stats, plus the semantic invariants a
schema cannot express: declared totals matching their lists, no
destination both installed and omitted, database keys matching their
sha1. validate_site.py checks the rendered HTML for metadata, headings,
image alternatives, duplicate ids and unresolved local links.
Pack manifests are read from inside the generated archives, where
generate_pack writes them, rather than from a dist/ glob that matches
nothing.
Emulator and platform schemas gain additionalProperties: false, and
cores[] plus contents[].name must be strings: an unquoted 81 or 01 in
YAML parses as a number and stops matching the upstream name.
Abdessamad Derraz