The data page promises that v1 fields are only ever added, and the envelope schema left items unconstrained, so a renamed field passed validation. Each kind now lists the fields its items carry and their types.
bundled describes the emulator's own release, and a platform package can differ both ways: Batocera's hcl package installs the binary alone and sends users to fetch the data, while its blueMSX core package copies the machines and databases beside the core. not_bundled_on and installed_on name those platforms, and the builder reads them through one rule.
A file or tree installed with the emulator is already on the user's machine, so packs, install manifests and verify's pack count leave it out. bundled is scoped by mode like any entry: Dolphin's Sys and PPSSPP's assets ship with the standalone releases, not with the libretro cores, so they now follow the libretro build only and still reach RetroArch packs. PrimeHack, standalone only, ships its own Sys.
Paid Android emulators announce versions that circulate only rebuilt or re-signed. The profile stays on the newest unmodified build, and version_source.no_genuine_copy names the release searched for, so check_freshness stops flagging it until the page announces a later one.
About forty profiles describe projects published outside any forge (Altirra, ePSXe, DraStic, mednafen, xroar). profile_sync skipped them as an unsupported host and check_freshness reported the same UNKNOWN line every run, so a new release adding a firmware went unseen. A profile can now name the page announcing its releases and a pattern for the version: --check-version reads it, and check_freshness --profiles calls the profile stale when the page announces another version than core_version.
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.
Batocera, RetroBat, Recalbox and ROCKNIX offer some emulators both as a
libretro core and standalone. Filed as standalone only, the libretro
layout was dropped: libretro Dolphin had no dolphin-emu/Sys/GC files.
Platforms now name dual-mode emulators and each gets both layouts.
RomM's verify_file_hashes compares the size, then md5, sha1 or crc. We
compared md5 alone, so a fixture entry with one mistyped hash was left out
of the pack RomM would accept it from. The rule is declared in romm.yml
and read by verify, the builder and the manifest.
A prose citation whose text lived under several pins stayed in
read again until the text changed, so fixnes, zesarux and emucorex,
exact at their pins, would have refused every later bump.
prose_written_at names the pin a reader confirmed; it settles the
readings and never overrides a history with one candidate.
Dolphin and its forks hash dsp_rom.bin and dsp_coef.bin together and
warn on any combination outside known_roms. The profiles now carry the
accepted pairs, and the resolver keeps both files inside the first pair
the collection holds whole: MMJR and Ishiiruka were served the free ROM
beside the official coefficients.
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.
nethersx2-turnip-classic documents the shim rules of the revision it
pins, and says so in prose: the classic build is that revision. Compared
to HEAD it reported the same two changes every pass, and recaling would
have repointed its refs at rules this build never had.
pin_frozen says the freeze is deliberate, and the profile is then judged
against its own revision, exactly as one pinned to a superseded tag
already was. Recale and bump are refused for it, which is what makes the
declaration safe to trust.
Saying those profiles would stay open no matter what was wrong. A dead
forge is a verifiable fact, and a fact can be recorded: upstream_gone
carries why, and the profile stops being an open problem. The refs
describe the last revision anyone could reach, which is all any reader
can ask of them.
The declaration is guarded rather than trusted, because a forge can come
back and a profile that keeps asserting a death nobody rechecks is worse
than one that fails loudly. Declared and unreachable reports as a
recorded fact; declared and answering reports as the contradiction it
is, and the profile has to be read again.
yuzu and suyu carry GitHub's 451. citron carries the loss of
git.citron-emu.org and the squatter now sitting on the .com. Each names
what was probed and when, so the next reader retraces it rather than
repeating it.
Four Switch profiles were unverifiable and said so on stderr every pass.
yuzu and suyu answer 451, citron's host stopped resolving, and
git.eden-emu.dev returns 403 to anything that is not a browser. Each
aborted its own report, so nothing could be said about any of them, and
the noise repeated on every run over the whole corpus.
A withdrawn forge is now a fact rather than a failure. GoneError covers
451, 410 and a host that does not resolve; none is retried, since three
attempts with backoff end in the same place. Those profiles land in
their own summary bucket, out of the review backlog where nobody could
act on them anyway. A 403 stays what it was, a refusal, because small
Forgejo instances behind anti-bot filters issue it routinely.
A profile can now name a source_mirror, consulted after source and
upstream so a live primary always decides attribution. Reaching it took
two more changes: a repository that refuses is muted for the rest of the
pass instead of ending it, keyed by host as well as slug because a
mirror carries the same slug on another forge; and a refused miss is not
cached, or the mute would answer for the mirror that was about to be
asked.
eden now reads from its Codeberg copy, which holds the same head and the
pinned commit: 5 refs, all anchored, where the profile could not be
checked at all. yuzu, suyu and citron have no mirror that serves
content, and now say so once instead of failing loudly.
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