RetroPie's YAML listed no standalone_cores, so every package was laid
out as a libretro core and the standalone files of amiberry, dolphin,
hatari, mame and ppsspp never reached the pack. Packages without the
lr- prefix (bar the retroarch frontend) are now standalone, and names
shipped both ways are dual-mode.
The scraper declared every standalone package launched both ways,
reasoning that RetroArch carries every libretro core. package.mk says
otherwise: it adds ARMSX2 as armsx2-sa only (add_emu_core ps2 armsx2
armsx2-sa true), so the libretro build's pcsx2/resources entries
reached ROCKNIX's list as armsx2-sa files the standalone installs
itself. An emulator is now dual-mode only when package.mk also adds it
as a retroarch core: ten of the 63 standalone names.
EmuHawk finds every firmware by SHA1 against FirmwareDatabase.FirmwareRecords, and its cores are its own builds. The registry and the scraper both listed libretro cores whose systems overlap BizHawk's, so the pack shipped Clock Signal, O2EM, FBNeo, VICE and Citra files into Firmware/ that EmuHawk never reads. Both lists are now empty, as MiSTer's are: the database alone decides.
Six platforms are read from a branch: System.dat, batocera-systems.json, checkBIOS.sh, the MiSTer BiosDB, the RetroPie scriptmodules and the RetroDECK component manifests. Their YAML named the branch, so the native export patched whatever the branch had become since the scrape. Each scraper now resolves the branch head once, reads every file at that commit and writes it into source. The export follows a recorded tarball and a recorded tree as it already followed a raw file URL.
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.
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.
Thirty platform system ids, such as sufami, pokemini, vsmile, and
Recalbox's comma-joined msx1,msx2, matched no system any profile
names, so no core file was attributed to them and --system missed them.
The scraper maps now carry those names, and a test holds every platform
system to a profile system apart from two named folds.
RetroDECK filed coco as tandy-coco and Dragon as dragon-32-64, MiSTer
filed COCO3 as tandy-coco and Recalbox kept its raw ids, so none of
them met xroar's coco, coco3 and dragon64 and its ROMs reached no
system. The scraper maps now agree and a test holds every shared
native id to one system.
BizHawk embeds ares as Ares64, its N64 core, whose 64DD IPL its own
FirmwareDatabase declares. Mapped to the whole ares profile, it pulled
thirty systems into the BizHawk pack and made slots accuse
FirmwareDatabase.cs of a wrong MSX.rom it never declared for ares.
The registry list added clk and gsplus, which RetroDECK does not ship
as components, current or archived, and overrode the list the scraper
reads from the component manifests.
RetroBat's platform file carried no core list, and a registry list
copied from Batocera stood in with ports RetroBat never runs and none
of its standalone emulators marked as such. The scraper now reads
es_systems.cfg at the release tag: libretro cores, and every other
emulator as standalone.
es_bios.xml names only the cores that need a BIOS, so a hand-kept
registry list stood in, with mame and mamemess that Recalbox does not
ship and without vice, ymir, vircon32 and others it does. The scraper
now reads each system.ini of recalbox-romfs2 at the scraped tag, and
the registry list is gone.
verify.py and generate_pack.py must reach the same verdict on the same
file, and CLAUDE.md calls any divergence critical, but each spelled out
mode == 'existence' in its own words. Both now ask nativemode whether
the frontend reads the file's bytes, which is the one fact the rest
follows from, and a test holds the two answers together.
The BaseScraper contract the wiki asks contributors to implement had no
caller anywhere, so nothing proved compare_with_config, has_changes or
test_connection still worked.
Abdessamad Derraz