How to manually include external aar package using new Gradle Android Build System

Question

I've been experimenting with the new android build system and I've run into a small issue. I've compiled my own aar package of ActionBarSherlock which I've called 'actionbarsherlock.aar'. What I'm trying to do is actually use this aar to build my final APK. If I include the whole ActionBarSherlock library as an android-library module to my main project using compile project (':actionbarsherlock') I'm able to build successfully without any problems.

But my problem is that I want to provide that dependency as a aar file package MANUALLY just if I would a JAR then I can't seem to figure out how to properly include it into my project. I've attempted to use the compile configuration but this doesn't seem to work. I keep on getting cannot find symbol during compile which tells me that the classes.jar from aar package isn't getting included in the classpath.

Does anyone know of the syntax to manually include an aar package as a file?

build.gradle

buildscript {

 repositories {
     mavenCentral()
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.4'
  }
}
apply plugin: 'android'

repositories {
   mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    compile files('libs/actionbarsherlock.aar')
}

android {
    compileSdkVersion 15
    buildToolsVersion "17.0"
}

EDIT: So the answer is that it's not currently supported, here's the issue if you want to track it.

EDIT: Currently as this is still not supported directly the best alternative seems to be the proposed solution from @RanWakshlak

EDIT: Also simpler by using the syntax proposed by @VipulShah

Answer 1

Please follow below steps to get it working ( I have tested it up to Android Studio 2.2)

Lets say you have kept aar file in libs folder. ( assume file name is cards.aar )

then in app build.gradle specify following and click sync project with Gradle files. Open Project level build.gradle and add flatDir{dirs 'libs'} like did below

allprojects {
   repositories {
      jcenter()
      flatDir {
        dirs 'libs'
      }
   }
}

and now open app level build.grdle file and add .aar file

    dependencies {
       implementation(name:'cards', ext:'aar')
}

If everything goes well you will see library entry is made in build -> exploded-aar

Also note that if you are importing a .aar file from another project that has dependencies you'll need to include these in your build.gradle, too.