Use continuous integration to build Addressables

You can use a continuous integration (CI) system to perform Addressables content builds and your application player builds. This page provides general guidelines for building Addressables with CI systems.

Select a content builder

One of the main choices when building Addressables content is selecting a content builder. By default, if you call AddressableAssetSettings.BuildPlayerContent it uses the BuildScriptPackedMode script as the IDataBuilder instance. The BuildPlayerContent method checks the ActivePlayerDataBuilder setting and calls into that script's BuildDataImplementation

If you've implemented your own custom IDataBuilder and want to use it for your CI builds, set the ActivePlayerDataBuilderIndex property of AddressableAssetSettings. By default, you can access the correct settings instance through AddressableAssetSettingsDefaultObject.Settings. This index refers to the position of the IDataBuilder in the list of AddressableAssetSettings.DataBuilders. The following code sample demonstrates how to set a custom IDataBuilder:

#if UNITY_EDITOR
    using UnityEditor.AddressableAssets;
    using UnityEditor.AddressableAssets.Build;
    using UnityEditor.AddressableAssets.Settings;
    using UnityEngine;

    internal class CustomDataBuilder
    {
        public static void SetCustomDataBuilder(IDataBuilder builder)
        {
            AddressableAssetSettings settings
                = AddressableAssetSettingsDefaultObject.Settings;

            int index = settings.DataBuilders.IndexOf((ScriptableObject)builder);
            if (index > 0)
                settings.ActivePlayerDataBuilderIndex = index;
            else if (AddressableAssetSettingsDefaultObject.Settings.AddDataBuilder(builder))
                settings.ActivePlayerDataBuilderIndex
                    = AddressableAssetSettingsDefaultObject.Settings.DataBuilders.Count - 1;
            else
                Debug.LogWarning($"{builder} could not be found " +
                                 $"or added to the list of DataBuilders");
        }
    }
#endif

Clean the Addressables content builder cache

IDataBuilder implementations define a ClearCachedData method, which cleans up any files created by that data builder. For example, the default BuildScriptPackedMode script deletes the following:

• The content catalog
• The serialized settings file
• The built AssetBundles
• Any link.xml files created

You can call IDataBuilder.ClearCachedData as part of your CI process to make sure the build doesn't use files generated by earlier builds.

Clean the scriptable build pipeline cache

Cleaning the Scriptable Build Pipeline (SBP) cache cleans the BuildCache folder from the Library directory along with all the hash maps generated by the build and the Type Database. The Library/BuildCache folder contains .info files created by SBP during the build which speeds up subsequent builds by reading data from these .info files instead of re-generating data that hasn't changed.

To clear the SBP cache in a script without opening a prompt dialog, call BuildCache.PurgeCache(false).

When building Addressables content or player builds with command line arguments or through continuous integration, you should restart the Unity Editor for each target platform. This ensures that Unity can't invoke -executeMethod until after script compilation completes for a platform. For more information about using command line arguments, refer to the Unity User Manual documentation Command line arguments.