I do remember someone from GOG mentioned that they WOULD do this. Anyone got a link? That could come in handy as something to remind them of.

They said it in one of their Twitch videos in the past. See here (49:40) https://www.gog.com/news/ask_us_anything_on_twitch

Voted.

Since mantis gives me a headache every time I look at it, do post here if something major is mentioned there. Thanks.

Also, a reminder. The previous wishlist entry is here:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/document_the_protocol_and_api_of_the_galaxy_updater_client_to_enable_community_alternatives

But it's lost in the noise of the features section, so I opened a new one in the Galaxy tab. May be they can be merged.

Here:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_galaxy_api/post3

He is talking about the SDK for developing games that use Galaxy network libraries. It's a different matter.

My bad.

I just saw blue and galaxy, having noted the lack of blue in here. ;)

I voted for this as well. I've been waiting a long time for a nice API to provide better integration with http://www.completionator.com/. I know Steam is generally frowned upon here, but their Web API has been pretty solid so far and it'd be awesome to have something similar to that for GOG.

I'd rather see a site like Completionator, The Backloggery, or HowLongToBeat support importing the JSON dumps IsThereAnyDeal.com can now produce. I already rely on it to provide a unified collection and waitlist system and maintain a userscript to allow importing from sites like GOG with no API.

I'm all for this!
I'm guessing that GOG still thinks that their protocol is a bit messy and wants to clean things up to show something a bit more elegant and long-lasting. Or maybe they don't have anyone to spare to document things and answer questions. Or beta is not that beta anymore, and major changes are still happening, and new features suggest changes in the protocol that is not final yet.
None of these reasons would preclude a note saying "we will publish it shortly after the official release is stable." How did it happen with the GOG downloader? Was GOG friendly with that effort, or were they dragging their feet all the way?
And do you think it would be hard for your manager to support Wine installations?

GOG didn't document anything, and periodically broke their downloader protocol. Sude just reverse engineered the whole thing originally. Galaxy however is more complex, so avoiding the reverse engineering the whole thing from scratch again would be very helpful.

I didn't think of Wine installations yet. It's something to ponder about. Since Wine is quite external to the game, and can be managed with PlayOnLinux and the like, may be that manager shouldn't mess with it and just deliver the package (since Wine installations also involve registry settings and so on). How is GOG's Galaxy client doing it exactly? Delivers files and runs some scripts with registry stuff? If that would be provided, then Wine installation shouldn't be extremely hard. Though I'm not sure how to integrate it with PlayOnLinux, since I prefer to use that for actually managing Wine versions / vs installed games.

I see... In that case, has GOG played well with the Free Software crowd on anything so far?

What I had in mind was to call a script, such as

WINEPREFIX=$GAMENAME wine /path/to/installer.exe

(I don't use Wine much, so use this example just as an illustration)

Running and uninstalling games should be similar, I expect.

Yeah. that's doable for installing, but I don't think you need the manager for that. The main benefit of the manager is patching already installed games without installing them. I'll have to analyze first how GOG client does that for Windows games (I didn't use GOG client yet).

Galaxy admins commented on the bug (and closed it with some automated reply): It doesn't sound promising, since I never saw developers commenting in any of these wishlist entries and they are very poorly suitable for serious technical discussions which such effort involves. It looks more like a brush off and an attempt to turn it into one way street, instead of a proper communication with community.