I'm answering this question here, rather than where you asked it, to avoid hijacking that thread.
I can only say that @srwhite has taken ALL his vitamins.. 
he's come up with more and more things to ADD to the already large v1.7 release he's been teasing.
He's opened a Beta offering and that directly lead him to add yet another feature. (Manifest) To my knowledge, he has not released the code to Beta. As an Alpha tester, I can say that the code is working perfectly, minus some of the tiniest nits I've ever found.
Here's a clue from the alpha repository:
Yep.. 3 hours ago I did some testing.. then an hour ago, I got to start all over.
In a high level overview... the 1.7 release will have at least 3 'sections' of feature improvements.
- The addition of yet another means to communicate between hubs.. via HubConnect Server, running under NodeJS on an always-on computer.
- Improvements in support.
- Improvements in Custom Driver
Custom Driver is a feature that is near-and-dear because it's the 'missing feature' of all the similar tools that came before. When new devices come along, there's always early adopters that want to connect them sooner rather than later and for the Platform, that's well handled by Apps and Driver code. HubLink and OtherHub didn't 'see' that future and don't allow for development in the same way. HubConnect has always had the ability to extend itself.
