Maven refuse to download aar packaged dependency from remote repository

Question

I want to use this android dependency in my java program:

http://jcenter.bintray.com/com/o3dr/android/dronekit-android/2.9.0/

so I added all the plugins & repositories into my maven pom file:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>central</id>
        <name>bintray</name>
        <url>http://jcenter.bintray.com</url>
        <!--<snapshots>-->
            <!--<enabled>false</enabled>-->
        <!--</snapshots>-->
    </repository>
</repositories>

<pluginRepositories>
    <pluginRepository>
        <!--<snapshots>-->
            <!--<enabled>false</enabled>-->
        <!--</snapshots>-->
        <id>central</id>
        <name>bintray-plugins</name>
        <url>http://jcenter.bintray.com</url>
    </pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>com.simpligility.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>android-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>4.1.0</version>

            <extensions>true</extensions>
            <configuration>
                <sign>
                    <debug>false</debug>
                </sign>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        ...

Then I add the dependency into the same file:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.o3dr.android</groupId>
        <artifactId>dronekit-android</artifactId>
        <version>2.9.0</version>
        <type>aar</type>
    </dependency>

But nothing happens, maven ignore it as if it doesn't exist, if I import its main package in a scala file and build it with mvn clear install -U, I get this error:

[ERROR] /home/peng/git-drone/dronespike/src/main/scala/Main.scala:1: object o3dr is not a member of package com
[ERROR] import com.o3dr.android._
[ERROR] ^

Question: What should I do to fix this problem?

Answer 1

Use Android packaging, e.g. <packaging>apk</packaging>.

If Maven couldn't download the artifact, it would complain much sooner in the build lifecycle. The problem is that artifact is downloaded, but not used. aar is not a standard Maven artifact, so Maven doesn't know what to do with it. Using it requires a third party plugin with extensions, hence usage of android-maven-plugin. Reading its documentation, it has some requirements to work properly. Specifically you didn't use android packaging as mentioned here:

usage of a supported packaging: apk, aar or apklib

Indeed, looking at the plugin source code it checks for android packaging before adding anything from aar to classpath.