Unable to resolve imports from Android Support Repository

[goderbauer]

I used the Android SDK Manager to install the Android Support Repository. When I now try to import something from there (e.g. android.support.v4.content.LocalBroadcastManager) into the Android app of my Flutter app, IntelliJ is unable to resolve it:

Cannot resolve Symbol 'LocalBroadcastManager'

The app compiles just fine with that import though. I played around a little with the "Project Structure..." settings, but without much success. It seems like there is no jar for the Android Support Repository on disk that I can include.

Would be nice to document how you can add and use stuff from the Android SDK with the new "Editing Android code in IntelliJ IDEA" support in IntelliJ with Flutter.

[devoncarew]

/cc @skybrian

[skybrian]

Hmm... I'm not up to speed on this yet, but the build is actually done using Gradle. In the build, the support libraries are defined in android/app/src/build.gradle.

If you can figure out where Gradle puts its output, maybe get the jar from there?

[skybrian]

Android support files seem to be installed here: $ANDROID_HOME/extras/android/m2repository. As the name suggests, these are Maven repository files.

It looks like LocalBroadcastManager is here:

$ ls $ANDROD_HOME/extras/android/m2repository/com/android/support/support-v4/25.3.1
support-v4-25.3.1.aar
support-v4-25.3.1.aar.md5
support-v4-25.3.1.aar.sha1
support-v4-25.3.1.pom
support-v4-25.3.1.pom.md5
support-v4-25.3.1.pom.sha1

An aar file is a zip file in Android Archive Format. If you look inside it there is a classes.jar file.

Based on Stack Overflow, it's apparently possible to unzip it and add the .jar file directly, but the normal way to do this is using Gradle.

[skybrian]

To add the dependency to your Gradle build, you need to add something like this to the dependencies clause in android/app/build.gradle:

    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:25.3.1'

[skybrian]

It looks like if you add that line and then build with "flutter run", it puts all the jars below this directory:

build/app/intermediates/exploded-aar

To determine which jar it is:

find build/app/intermediates/exploded-aar -name '*.jar' | xargs grep LocalBroadcastManager
Binary file build/app/intermediates/exploded-aar/com.android.support/support-core-utils/25.3.1/jars/classes.jar matches

I created a project library named exploded-aar and added this jar file, and it seems to have done the trick.