Use AppCompat themes with framework activity

Question

I want to use Theme.Appcompat.Light as the application theme to introduce Material Design to platform version 19:

<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="@style/Theme.AppCompat.Light">

But I don't quite like extending support library ActionBarActivity since I'm not going to support platforms below version 19 and the framework Activity should already have an action bar in platform version 19.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

From the recent post on getting started with AppCompat :

If you are not currently using AppCompat, or you are starting from scratch, here's how to set it up:

All of your Activities must extend from ActionBarActivity, which extends from FragmentActivity from the v4 support library, so you can continue to use fragments.

So to answer your question

Is this possible?

No it is not. You need to extend from ActionBarActivity to use the Theme.Appcompat.Light , even if you're not planning to support anything under v19.