OT: what does a manifest file?

[Tiemo Hollmann TB]

Hello,

With OS X 10.9 (10.9.5) Apple changed requirements for codesigning, e.g. the
location where some files within a bundle may be placed. See my thread
"codesigning error on OS X 10.9.5"

In my case since 10.9.5 I couldn't codesign any of my apps, because of the
manifest file in the root of all rev bundles. Deleting the manifest file in
all revs bundles like revxml.bundle within my apps solved the issue and
codesigning worked again. Runrev confirmed that they are working on this and
I could delete the manifest file. Because runrevs solution probably will be
made available only for the newest version, everybody who is working with
current versions has to delete those files manually (each time you build a
new standalone) if you want to codesign.

Can someone tell me, what the manifest files in runrevs bundle do and why
runrevs bundles also can work without them? I only know, that manifest files
can be used for storing preferences. But I would like to understand, what
happens, when I delete the manifest file and if I could catch me another
issue with this?

I wonder why nobody jumped into this thread. Am I the only one codesigning,
or am I doing something wrong? Is it so exotic to codesign? I thought it is
almost a must or at least state of the art.

Thanks

Tiemo