What is the purpose of the asset bundles manifest file?

In Unity 5, when you build assetbundles with the new api, there are also “manifest” files generated, with an overview of what’s in the assetbundle.

But what is the purpose of this file, other than being able to review the content of an assetbundle in a text editor?

I thought these files would have to be downloaded and then read to be able to know whether you have the correct assetbundle, but if I delete all manifest files, the assetbundles still work and I can still get hash numbers and crc codes from them, so it seems to me that they are of no use?

I guess I’m wrong but I don’t know why. Anyone here does?

I’ll reply this myself, from the docs: This manifest file is only used for incremental build, not necessary for runtime.