How to prevent unity from overwriting gradle files when exporting again?

[mcwind168]

When exporting android project with early version, ie. Unity 2020, removing the first comment line will prevent overwriting when exporting again. Like this:

// GENERATED BY UNITY. REMOVE THIS COMMENT TO PREVENT OVERWRITING WHEN EXPORTING AGAIN
apply plugin: 'com.android.library'
....

But when I upgrade to Unity 2021.3 (LTS)，this line is gone and overwriting always happens .
Now I have to enable custom-gradle in Unity project and export again and again whenever I changed the gradle. It’s a inefficient way.
Is there any option to prevent Uity2021 from overwriting gradle files exist in android project ?

[Tomas1856]

@mcwind168

When exporting android project with early version, ie. Unity 2020, removing the first comment line will prevent overwriting when exporting again. Like this:

// GENERATED BY UNITY. REMOVE THIS COMMENT TO PREVENT OVERWRITING WHEN EXPORTING AGAIN
apply plugin: 'com.android.library'
....

But when I upgrade to Unity 2021.3 (LTS)，this line is gone and overwriting always happens .
Now I have to enable custom-gradle in Unity project and export again and again whenever I changed the gradle. It’s a inefficient way.
Is there any option to prevent Uity2021 from overwriting gradle files exist in android project ?

In 2021.2, Android build pipeline became incremental, thus this is expected.

Your options are either to use templates or to use https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Android.IPostGenerateGradleAndroidProject.html and keep overwriting gradle file.

In future Unity versions (hopefully 2023.1) we’ll provide an API for manipulating gradle files in a more user friendly way.