How to automatically run code before a build?

Question

Hey everyone,

I'm working on getting a simple build versioning system in place that will basically store a version number in a game object and allow me to display the number during the game. This works, but it required me to create a menu item called "Increment Build Number" and I have to manually run it whenever I create a build.

I know there is a PostprocessPlayer functionality to do things after a build has occurred, but is there any way to run some code right before a build takes place? If so, I could just automatically increment my build number there instead of doing it manually.

Answer 1

Answer by Wollbobaggins · Aug 24, 2021 at 06:37 PM

For anyone looking into this today, you can now implement, IPreprocessBuildWithReport, to receive a callback before the build is started.

Here is the example provided on the unity documentation:

 using UnityEditor;
 using UnityEditor.Build;
 using UnityEditor.Build.Reporting;
 using UnityEngine;
 
 class MyCustomBuildProcessor : IPreprocessBuildWithReport
 {
     public int callbackOrder { get { return 0; } }
     public void OnPreprocessBuild(BuildReport report)
     {
         Debug.Log("MyCustomBuildProcessor.OnPreprocessBuild for target " + 
             report.summary.platform + " at path " + report.summary.outputPath);
     }
 }

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Answer 2

You should write your own build script for this. Recently I did exactly what you wanted, showing a version in the game. I generate a file in "Resources" folder which contains version number. Then in game I open this file as text asset and get version number. I generate version according to build date and time, so I don't need to increment it automatically. But with some logic change that can also be done. Read the last value, increment and save...ect.

These are in BuildScript.cs

BuildClient method:

 [MenuItem("Inspire13/Build Test Client #F5")]
 public static void BuildClient() 
 {
     //KillClients(); // You can kill the running processes here before build.
     SignVersionFile();
     UnityEngine.Debug.Log("Building Client, Directory: " + mClientBuildDirectory);
 
     try
     {
         PlayerSettings.productName = "TestClient";
         string[] scenes = new string[] { "Assets/_Scenes/Level1.unity", "Assets/_Scenes/Level2" };
 
         // Build player
         string fileFullPath = mClientBuildDirectory + "/" + mClientBinaryName + ".exe";
         BuildPipeline.BuildPlayer(scenes, fileFullPath, BuildTarget.StandaloneWindows, BuildOptions.Development);
 
         UnityEngine.Debug.Log("Built!, File: " + fileFullPath);
     }
     catch (Exception e)
     {
         UnityEngine.Debug.LogException(e);
     }     
 }

Don't mind the local variables "mClientBuildDirectory, mClientBinaryName...ect"

And here is my version file generator method SignVersionFile method:

 static void SignVersionFile() 
 {
     UnityEngine.Debug.Log("Signing version file...");
 
     try
     {
         string versionFilePath = Application.dataPath + "/Resources/" + VersionFile;
 
         // Writes with UTF-8 without BOM (byte order mark)
         using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(versionFilePath))
         {
             string versionDate = DateTime.Now.ToString("ddMM-HHmm", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
             string versionLine = String.Format("{0}.{1}.{2}", MainVersion, SubVersion, versionDate);
             writer.Write(versionLine);
         }
 
         AssetDatabase.Refresh();
         UnityEngine.Debug.Log("Signed!");
     }
     catch (Exception e)
     {
         UnityEngine.Debug.LogException(e);
     }
 }

If you don't want to write your own build script, you can do the similar thing with PostProcessSceneAttribute: http://docs.unity3d.com/412/Documentation/ScriptReference/PostProcessSceneAttribute.html

How to automatically run code before a build?

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