Release Notes

The full release history, with commit-level detail and downloadable zips, is available on the GitHub Releases page.

2.9.1

Reliable release verification: fixed a race in the bug-report sink test that could make the release verification job fail intermittently.
Generated release notes: the publish job now checks out the full repository history before creating the GitHub release, so gh release create --generate-notes works reliably.

Maintenance release; the application behavior is unchanged from 2.9.0.
The release zip is framework-dependent and requires the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime.

Single-file executables: each bundle contains one RomValidator.exe (framework-dependent; the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime is still required).
Complete bundles: the zips now include LICENSE.txt, ReadMe.md and WhatsNew.md alongside the bundled 7-Zip fallback executables.
Update-checker compatible names: release_<version>_win-x64.zip and release_<version>_win-arm64.zip, matching the tag convention parsed by the in-app update check.
Safer archive repacking: internal renames target the file whose hash matches the DAT entry (not just the first file), folder structure is preserved, and converting a .rar to .zip never overwrites an existing zip.
Fewer false bug reports: files locked by another process are logged locally instead of being reported as bugs.
UTF-16/UTF-32 XML DAT files are accepted again, and disk-full errors while moving files stop the validation queue cleanly.
Documentation published to GitHub Pages and mirrored to the GitHub Wiki, both with side navigation, plus CI and an automated release workflow.

The release zip is framework-dependent and requires the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime.
RAR archives are converted to ZIP when their internal filenames must be renamed.

Archive support for .zip, .7z and .rar using SharpCompress, with the bundled 7-Zip 26.03 standalone executables (7za.exe, 7za_arm64.exe) as a fallback for reading and creating archives.
DAT generation from a folder of ROMs with CRC32, MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256, duplicate detection and a No-Intro compliant XML export.
Validation against No-Intro XML DAT files with automatic renaming when the hash matches a different file name, including files inside archives.
Safe result organization: _success, _fail and _duplicate folders; deletion is opt-in and confirmed.
Automatic update checks against GitHub releases.
Diagnostics: rolling log files, F8 screenshots, and automatic bug reports for Warning, Error and Fatal events.
Fluent dark theme built on WPF-UI.

The release zip is framework-dependent and requires the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime.
Only No-Intro XML DAT files are accepted; ClrMamePro, MAME and binary formats are rejected with a clear message.

See GitHub Releases for release notes of earlier versions.