Why does the parent Prefab in AssetBundles not depend on the child Prefab, but instead adds all information from the child Prefab in the AssetBundle?

Unity Engine
1

I found this problem in Unity 2020.3.40f1 with Addressables 1.20.5, and I also did a same experiment in Unity 2022.3.50f1 (the latest LTS) with Addressables 1.22.2, which showed a same result.

I used Addressables to build bundles. Suppose bundle A contains a Prefab ‘a’, which is composed of two Prefabs ‘b’ (Prefab ‘b’ is quite complex, containing 1000 empty GameObjects). Bundle B contains Prefab ‘b’. After clicking build and examining the resulting bundles, I found that bundle A is larger than bundle B, which surprised me. I expected that Prefab ‘a’ in bundle A would be small, because it only need to reference the two Prefabs ‘b’. Why is this happening?

The experiment I did in Unity 2022.3.50f1

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The Addressables Report, which shows Prefab ‘a’ doesn’t reference Prefab ‘b’, and bundle A is larger than bundle B.

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Please, any help would be highly appreciated.

2

Let’s give this a little bump so more people can see it