Use an Android Library (AAR) as dependency for a Java (Jar) Project with Gradle

The Java Jar build.gradle module:

apply plugin: 'java' dependencies { compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar']) compile 'junit:junit:4.12' // rx compile "io.reactivex.rxjava2:rxjava:2.0.4" compile "io.reactivex.rxjava2:rxandroid:2.0.1" } sourceCompatibility = "1.8" targetCompatibility = "1.8" 

This Jar is supposed to be a library used as an utility library for unit testing android projects:

apply plugin: 'com.android.application' android { // ... } dependencies { compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar']) // test testCompile 'junit:junit:4.12' testCompile project(':test-utils') // ... other non-test dependencies here (including rx) } 

This include:

 testCompile project(':test-utils') 

fails with:

Error:Module 'my-android-app:test-utils:unspecified' depends on one or more Android Libraries but is a jar

Which is because RxAndroid is an Android .aar library.

I need RxAndroid in my test utility module because one of the things the module provide is a junit MethodRule for setting up Rx Schedulers through the @Rule annotation and other custom annotations in @Test methods.

This is needed because RxAndroid AndroidScheduler use Android Handler / Looper class, which are part of the Android framework and are not available in unit tests. The Android Scheduler can be replaced using RxAndroidPlugins.

Which means I only need the JAR part of the RxAndroid AAR (classes.jar inside rxandroid artifact).

Is there a way to tell gradle I only need the Java part of the AAR as dependency?

I do not consider a solution manually extracting the classes.jar from the AAR and including it as a dependency. That's a workaround.

This Java test library is supposed to be shared among my projects and I'm currently copying the MethodRule class in every of my projects which is far from ideal.