Autodetect plug-ins for Embedded Linux

Unity automatically detects plug-ins for Embedded Linux. When you import plug-ins, Unity creates metadata files for each plug-inA set of code created outside of Unity that creates functionality in Unity. There are two kinds of plug-ins you can use in Unity: Managed plug-ins (managed .NET assemblies created with tools like Visual Studio) and Native plug-ins (platform-specific native code libraries). More info
See in Glossary. For example, a .so for shared objects and shared libraries and an .a for archive files. These metadata files contain the plug-in information, such as the target architecture and platform. The Unity build system refers to these metadata files for tracking which files to copy over during the build process.

You can have several shared libraries with the same name in a project. For example, you can have a libFoo.so for x86_64 and a libFoo.so for ARM64 in the same project as Unity detects the correct libFoo.so for your build target and copies it across to the Player build.

You can edit these files manually in the Unity Editor. However, you don’t need to manually add plug-ins to the Plugins folder in your project. Instead, you can place them in special folders located under the project’s Assets/Plugins/EmbeddedLinux folder in the project directory so Unity automatically detects and sets their platform and architecture for you when importing.

Auto detection rules

Unity automatically detects plug-ins for Embedded Linux based on the following rules:

• Architecture-specific folders: Place plug-ins under Assets/Plugins/EmbeddedLinux/<arch>, where <arch> is x86, x86_64, ARM, or ARM64. Unity copies them only when building an app for the respective target architecture. For example, if you place a plug-in under Assets/Plugins/EmbeddedLinux/x86_64, Unity copies it to the Player build only when building for x86_64.

• Plugins with no architecture: Place plug-ins with no architecture under Assets/Plugins/EmbeddedLinux and ensure that they’re checked for the target architecture through their respective ELF headers and that the appropriate architecture is assigned.