Nanodesu! 1.3.2

Nanodesu! 1.3.2

A format compatibility matrix, and an archive this tool could not read.

The archive it could not read

Any PyInstaller build carrying a splash screen failed to parse. VALID_TYPES omitted l, the
splash-resource code that has existed since 4.10, and an unrecognised code does not lose one
entry — it stops the table walk, which leaves nothing to parse and rejects the whole archive.

Reproduced against a real 836-entry archive by changing a single entry's code to l, which is
entirely valid:

entry 1 has unsupported type code 'l' (not in MRZbdmnosxz); table truncated here

So the failure was total, and its message was about an unsupported type code — nothing about
splashes. Fixed, and test_format_matrix.py now asserts the accepted set contains every code
PyInstaller has ever defined, and nothing else.

Three constants disagreed with upstream, and one named a code that does not exist

constant	value	upstream	upstream meaning
TC_BINARY_DEP	x	ARCHIVE_ITEM_DATA	data
TC_BINARY_EMBED	z	ARCHIVE_ITEM_PYZ	PYZ
TC_DATA	d	ARCHIVE_ITEM_DEPENDENCY	dependency
TC_RUNTIME	R	none	no version defines R

The values were always right, so the code behaved correctly — but a reader who trusts a name called
TC_BINARY_DEP inside a d branch is being set up to make a mistake. The names now follow
PyInstaller's own header, and TC_SPLASH / TC_SYMLINK exist rather than being anonymous letters.

FORMAT_MATRIX.md

Every fact in it is read out of PyInstaller's own sources for nine versions spanning the three
format generations — 3.6, 4.0, 4.10, 5.0, 5.13.2, 6.0.0, 6.11.1, 6.16.0, 6.22.3 — from sdists
fetched from PyPI. Nothing is written from memory and nothing is inferred from samples.

The finding that matters for a reader:

generation	versions	TOC record	cookie
1	3.6, 4.0	!iiiiBB	!8siiii64s
2	4.10 – 6.0	!iIIIBB	!8sIIii64s
3	6.11+	!IIIIBc	!8sIIII64s

The record sizes never changed — a TOC record is 18 bytes and a cookie is 88 in every
generation. The layouts are byte-for-byte identical; only the signedness of the integer fields
differs, and a real archive never carries a negative offset or length. That is why one parser reads
all three, and why the bounds checks catch corruption under either reading.

tools/format_matrix.py regenerates the table, so the document is reproducible rather than
transcribed.

Testing

79 tests (was 61), green on Python 3.9, 3.12, 3.13 and 3.14. The matrix tests assert that the
code and the document agree, which is the only thing that keeps a table like this honest a year
later.

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The standalone .exe from this workflow is unsigned

The published .whl and .tar.gz on PyPI are the primary artifact and need no
signature: pip verifies them against the index hashes. The Windows executable
attached here is built by CI and carries no Authenticode signature, because the
signing certificate's private key deliberately does not exist in CI.

Signed builds are produced locally through the project's own signing pipeline. If a
signature matters for your use, build from source or use the PyPI package.