Scripting runtime version significantly affects build size?

Unity Engine
1

I’ve noticed that changing the Scripting Runtime Version from .NET 3.5 Equivalent to .NET 4.6 Equivalent increases Android build size by roughly 3 MB. This is with exactly the same code, built on the same Unity version (2017.1.0p4).

Is this expected behavior? Is the runtime environment that much larger, or is the build including a bunch of extra .NET packages that I’m not using?

2

Probably both. The runtime is larger and includes a lot of new functionality. Also, since it’s still “Experimental”, my guess is that Unity’s stripping engine hasn’t been tuned yet to do additional stripping against the 4.x runtime (just a guess), so it may result in a larger build size. All in all though, 3MB is really nothing.