Override android:vmSafeMode attribute for debug builds

[postlink] https://the-best-way-of-life-is-islam.blogspot.com/2015/07/override-androidvmsafemode-attribute.html [/postlink]

While trying to optimize the build and deployment speed for debugging an app I found large chunk of time was spent executing /system/bin/dex2oat during installation. This is the ART ahead of time compiler.

I found when targeting API 22 you can now stop the ART AOT compilation:

<application
    ...
    android:vmSafeMode="true">
 </application>

I saw a noticeable deployment speed improvement, however I have concerns as to possible side effects of making this change. It must cause a small runtime performance hit, but are there any other consequences of enabling the android:vmSafeMode option?

Is it possible to override this attribute, for debug builds, in the gradle build file? Or is creating a debug specific manifest file the only solution?