The two redesign branches and the archive repair met in the testing guide and the prose rules: list test_archive_recipes, drop three clause semicolons, write the forbidden glyphs as escapes in the image test. README and mkdocs.yml regenerated from the merged generator.
Five tabs from Start here to Contribute, a level on every page, a device picker on Get your files that lists every registered platform, and platform pages that open on where the files go, the command, the pack and how to check. FAQ and troubleshooting keep the questions asked before installing, the technical ones move to their own page, and getting started points to the pages that took its content.
scripts/sitediagrams.py writes the explainer, install flow, verification modes, MinUI card, pipeline and data layer diagrams as inline SVG from the registry, the platform files, the install manifests and the pipeline step list. A page asks for one with an image comment, which the decoration pass resolves. The two mermaid diagrams of the architecture page are replaced, so no page loads mermaid from unpkg.
Platform logos and system icons are copied once by fetch_site_images.py with their source and owner recorded, and the build rewrites the remote links to the copies. validate_site refuses an image from another host. Three registry logos named a personal avatar instead of the project's (RomM, ROCKNIX, MiSTer FPGA) and MyMinUI's was a GitHub identicon, now dropped.
One 1200x630 sharing card per section, a 404 page with search and the two entry pages, and a list of screenshots that need a real device.
A held archive whose name has a recipe fails when it carries three or more members outside every recipe of that name. Exempt: containers a platform pins by md5, members a platform pins by zipped_file, merged clones in their own folder, NAOMI device_ref ROMs, samples and artwork.
A release recorded without a platform's pack linked its button to that release, which serves no pack for AmberELEC, EmuELEC, KNULLI, MinUI, NextUI or MyMinUI. The cell now names the release and points to the installer, which reads the file lists on main. Core folder links resolve each core name to the profile page that describes it (mednafen_vb is beetle_vb).
Platform pages labelled base_destination, the root the platform's own list writes from, as the BIOS path, so EmuDeck read bios/ where the pack goes into ~/Emulation/bios/. The row now gives the registry's extract_to, the folder the README and the pack guide name. A platform that names no file (MinUI and its forks) showed 0/0 coverage and an empty systems table; its page now lists each core folder with the files the pack puts in it.
The layout check skipped any archive it found no copy of, and it looked
copies up by name only, so 23 MAME device sets held through the clone map
were never checked and pro1000.zip was never reported absent.
export_native counted MinUI, NextUI and MyMinUI as failures although the registry marks them native_list: none: their code names no BIOS file, so there is no list of theirs to correct.
A system that lists the cores it runs is settled by those cores alone, so an unprofiled core of another system no longer leaves its entries open. Readers whose core runs the entry's system are named first, and cores that only share the file name are listed as such.
EmuELEC's ports system has one emulator, `ports`, the dispatch to a
script ports.yaml generates. The scraper now reads each port's engine
(the libretro core handed to emuelecRunEmu.sh with -C, else port_exe),
so devilutionx, sonic2013, soniccd, sonic-mania, reminiscence and
rigelengine are examined. Standalone emulators keep the spelling the
launch code dispatches on instead of invented lowercase forms, and
media players and runtimes go to the overrides' remove_cores.
Each system of the AmberELEC, EmuELEC and KNULLI lists now carries the
cores its ES list offers it, in menu order, under `cores:`.
Two test modules still unpacked nine values from verify_pack_against_platform. The category evidence joined readers with semicolons, which the prose rule refuses on generated pages, and three comments used clause semicolons.
install.py --no-game-data leaves out the files and omissions the manifest
marks game data, in an install, --check and --dry-run, and names them with
their category. The --events summary gains left_out, one group per
category with every destination. A list without categories is refused.
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.
Each missing platform entry now carries its evidence: the profile entries that read it with their source reference, the cores of its system examined without finding a reader, or why the question stays open. verify --verbose prints it, --json carries it and the platform pages show it.
A platform list can name a game's data files or a file no core it runs opens. Verify gives each missing entry a category read from the profiles of the platform's cores: firmware, game data or unread. Only firmware gaps carry a severity and fail --strict; the others are counted on their own line, and the pack check no longer counts them as pack errors. Missing firmware stays a conformance error.
The pack check failed a pack for a declared file nothing in the collection resolves to, though the builder cannot ship it and verify already reports it missing. Such destinations are now counted as not in the collection; a held file absent from the pack stays an error.
minarch hands every core SDCARD_PATH/Bios/<TAG> as its system directory
and opens no file in it. The scrapers read each pak's launch.sh (core,
tag, devices), each device's core makefile (the project a library is
built from: MyMinUI's dosbox_libretro.so is dosbox-pure) and the minarch
statement, at a pinned commit. The installer recognises the card from
.system/version.txt and refuses a folder inside it.
install.py reads the file list before it checks a single file, so
without a connection nothing is checked: the screen says No connection
and offers to check again.
AmberELEC, PAN4ELEC and EmuELEC detection now installs their own lists
at /storage/roms, the root those lists are written against; KNULLI its
own list at /userdata/bios. JELOS, KOLOS, UnofficialOS and Arch R keep
RetroArch's list with the folder their retroarch.cfg names.
build_port.py runs after split_pack.py, so RetroBIOS.zip is in the
signed checksum list and uploaded with the packs. check_release.py takes
the port from that list: it is no pack, so release.json does not record
it.
ports/RetroBIOS runs install.py on a handheld with PortMaster's own
screens (pugwash fifo_control through PortMasterDialog.txt), using only
what PortMaster 2024.02.26 and the 8.5.23 copy JELOS ships. It reads the
installer through --events. scripts/build_port.py writes RetroBIOS.zip
in the layout PortMaster's release build gives a port, with the
install.py the bootstraps pin, reproducibly. tests/test_port drives the
screens with stubbed dialog functions and a fake installer.
One JSON object per line on stdout (detection, per-file and per-system
check, download progress, summary, exit code) and the usual text on
stderr, so a program driving install.py never parses prose. EVENT_KEYS
is the one schema. The installer page documents it, and a test holds the
two equal. The handheld port reads it.
The Google Play and retroarch.com builds share com.retroarch and com.retroarch.aarch64 but build their defaults under different roots (RetroArch v1.22.2 MainMenuActivity.java:182-183). The build is told by the version code it records in retroarch.cfg, else by the folder it wrote. A Google Play folder Termux cannot write is named, as for DraStic and Flycast.
Each OS publishes Batocera's systems dict (knulli-systems, and
batocera-systems at AmberELEC's newest prerelease commit and EmuELEC v4.8),
read with the shared parser. Cores come from each OS's own ES list.
AmberELEC and EmuELEC declare neogeo/ and ports/ beside bios/ from
/storage/roms, so their packs extract there and core_destination puts
core files under bios/.
DraStic keeps its BIOS in its private data and Flycast in Android/data,
which Termux cannot write on Android 11 and later. An installed one is now
named with the files not copied, and a writable Flycast folder is a
standalone copy target.
RetroDECK moves each of its folders on its own and records the new place
in retrodeck.json paths (api_data_processing.sh:913-935). Only
rd_home_path was read, so files went to <home>/bios after a move.
AmberELEC, EmuELEC, JELOS, KOLOS, UnofficialOS, ArchR, PAN4ELEC, dArkOS,
RetroOZ, spruceOS, CrossMix-OS, Onion, Allium, Koriki, MiyooCFW and plumOS
are found by what their builds write, named as they name themselves, and
installed to the system_directory of their RetroArch config, which follows
ArkOS and dArkOS to a second card. TrimUI stock, MinUI and a plumOS build
without a known folder are named and not installed to. Two unrelated
systems matching stop a run without a terminal.
Both branches extracted RetroBat's Flycast BiosPath: value_folders
already produces the record, so the dedicated extractor is dropped and
its test reads the generic one.
RetroArch_installCores (emuDeckRetroArch.sh) downloads flycast, mame,
melonds, mgba, mupen64plus_next, ppsspp and scummvm as libretro cores
next to their standalone apps. Listed as standalone only, they got one
layout: once Flycast's standalone files moved to flycast/bios/, the
libretro core lost dc/airlbios.zip, dc/naomi2.zip and dc/segasp.zip.
The scraper now writes them as dual_mode_cores.
Abdessamad Derraz