In Android development, an AAR (Android ARchive) is a binary file that contains compiled code and resources for an Android library module. The AAR file can be included as a dependency in an Android project, allowing developers to reuse the library’s functionality and resources in their own app.
The error message states that the resulting AAR would be broken. This means that if you were to create an AAR file that includes dependencies on other local AAR files (i.e., AAR files that are located on your local development machine), the resulting AAR file would not include the classes and resources from those local AAR files. This would cause the AAR file to fail when it is used in another Android project.
To understand why this happens, it is important to know how AAR files are built. When an AAR file is built, it includes the compiled code and resources for the library module that is being packaged. However, if the library module includes dependencies on other AAR files, those dependencies are not automatically included in the resulting AAR file. Instead, the AAR file only includes a reference to the dependency, which tells the Android build system to fetch the dependency from its specified location (i.e., a remote repository or a local file system) at build time.
In the case of local AAR file dependencies, the Android build system is unable to fetch the necessary classes and resources because they are not available at the specified location. This causes the resulting AAR file to be incomplete, and it will not function correctly when used in another Android project.
To resolve this error, you need to ensure that all local AAR file dependencies are included in the resulting AAR file. One way to do this is to manually copy the classes and resources from the local AAR files into the library module that is being packaged into the AAR file. Another way is to use a build tool that can automatically include local AAR file dependencies in the resulting AAR file.
We provided an example in our post.