status of MANIFEST file

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Dec 8, 2007 7:38 PM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>
> On Dec 9, 2007, at 1:18 , Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
>
> > So what I'm basically asking is what the exact requirements for the
> > MANIFEST file are as activities seem to work regardless of what it
> > contains.
>
> Currently, the MANIFEST is not consulted at all when installing or
> running, an activity works fine even without it.
>
> Only the bundle builder (setup.py) to package your activity uses it.
> The bundle builder also includes many files implicitly so they do not
> have to be listed in MANIFEST.
>
> The situation might change once bundles are required to be signed,
> but I don't know those plans.

For the activity updater (trac #4951), we will need to include a
'real' manifest with file hashes; this may also be used in the
activity signing code.  However, I expect the bundle builder to
generate this 'contents' file automatically.  The short answer, I
think, is that the MANIFEST is used to configure bundle-builder; it
shouldn't be required in the final .xo (although a related 'contents'
files will be automatically generated there).
 --scott

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