Release file differences on the homepage and the github page

[GearMetal11]

Hello!

You can download the emulator release either from the homepage downloads section, or from the github releases assets. But these downloaded files are not the same. For example checking the 1.20.3 windows portable release, inside the zip the 'PPSSPPWindows64.exe' file has a different filesize and hash depending whether you downloaded it from the home page or the github. The github package is also missing the 'PPSSPPWindows.exe' file, but not sure if that matters.

Why are the .exe files having different sizes and should the files be identical?

Thanks for the emulator!

[Henrik]

They're built two different ways. The github assets are built with github CI (which I think uses the latest compilers, or whatever compilers are on there) while the official releases are built using MSVC build tools 2022, so that we can still function on Windows 7.

[GearMetal11]

Thanks for the answer!

[Al-Ameen Adewunmi]

It’s a common point of confusion, but the short answer is that the site builds and the GitHub releases usually come from different build environments. The version on the homepage is often an automated "gold" build compiled on the dev's own build server, whereas GitHub assets are frequently generated by GitHub Actions. Even with the same source code, different compiler versions or optimization flags will spit out different hashes and file sizes. As for the missing 32-bit PPSSPPWindows.exe on GitHub, most modern CI pipelines are dropping x86 support to save on compile time and bandwidth, while the main site usually keeps the "complete" legacy bundle for maximum compatibility. As long as you're grabbing them from those two official sources, you're safe—just don't expect the hashes to match up perfectly across different mirrors.