title: How to manually include external aar package using Gradle for Android
body: <p>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.</p>
  
  <p>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.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know of the syntax to manually include an aar package as a file?</p>
  
  <p>build.gradle </p>
  
  <pre><code>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"
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>EDIT: So the answer is that it's not currently supported, here's the <a href="https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=55863">issue</a> if you want to track it.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: Currently as this is still not supported directly the best alternative seems to be the proposed solution from @RanWakshlak</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: Also simpler by using the syntax proposed by @VipulShah </p>