Android framework version

Other

Affected platform version

VS 2022 / net7.0-android

Description

In my Xamarin app, I have a pre-build event that runs a script which generates AssemblyInfo.cs (Windows), Info.plist (iOS) and AndroidManifest.xml (Android) from a template, filling in some version info (i.e. git commit hash, etc). The repo includes the template file, i.e. AndroidManifest.template.xml; AndroidManifest.xml itself is .gitignored, since its contents change with each build.

On Windows & iOS, this works great. However on Android, it seems to check for the existence of AndroidManifest.xml before running the pre-build event, saying:

1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\packs\Microsoft.Android.Sdk.Windows\33.0.95\tools\Xamarin.Android.Common.targets(574,3): error XA1018: Specified AndroidManifest file does not exist: D:\Work\USRadar\_Solution_\RadarMP\RadarMP.Android\AndroidManifest.xml.

Since it checks for this before pre-build, the script can't run & generate AndroidManifest.xml from the template. I therefore have to manually create a "dummy" AndroidManifest.xml every time I checkout the repo, just so the first-time build will run the pre-build event & generate the real AndroidManifest.xml. All builds after that work.

How can I get the Android project to run the pre-build event, before checking for that file, similar to Windows & iOS?

Steps to Reproduce

Please see description

Did you find any workaround?

No response

Relevant log output

No response