Include aar into aar

Question

I have an android library distributed in aar format. It weight 300kb. I want to create another library and also in aar format, where first library in dependencies. But result library weight is 30kb, so obviously it does not not include first library.

I tried to add first library using flatDir:

repositories {
    flatDir {
        dirs 'libs'
    }
}
dependencies {
    compile(name:'mylib-1.0', ext:'aar')
}

And publish to mavenLocal using maven-publish:

repositories {
    mavenLocal()
}
dependencies {
    compile 'com.mylib:mylib:1.0.0@aar'
}

but still it does not include to result aar.

How to include my first aar to result aar?

Answer 1

The best way to achieve it is to distribute the aar with a maven repo.

The aar file doesn't contain the transitive dependencies and doesn't have a pom file which describes the dependencies used by the library.
It means that, if you are importing a aar file using a flatDir repo you have to specify the dependencies also in your project.

Using a maven repository you will not have the same issue.
In this case, gradle downloads the dependencies using the pom file which will contains the dependencies list.