Although Android Libraries are the recommend way to package and use larger components, there’s no clean way to handle them in a Maven-based Eclipse or Jenkins environment. Sure, JARs are easy enough, but not the co-requisite resource files. Checking these into source control is just wrong, and full Maven support for these libs in incomplete, even with m2e, m2e-android, and android-maven-plugin in place.

Apklibs provide a decent stopgap, so I settled on that approach: loading the zips (ahem, apklibs) to Nexus and creating scripts to link things up during build. It requires one manual step in Eclipse, but no biggie. Yet there are greener pastures ahead…

The upcoming new Android Build System addresses this problem with AARs. Of course, it goes much further, ditching Maven for Gradle, ADT for Android Studio, Eclipse for IntelliJ, and XML for Groovy. I like new things, but while we’re waiting on the new house, I wish Google would finish fixing the plumbing in the current one.