Compiling android project with a library project fails with missing classes.jar

Question

I'm making an app that depends on the Android v7 appCompat support library. When I'm trying to build the project with Ant, I get an error from dex stating that it can't find the file classes.jar from the appCompat project's bin directory. Here's what I have done:

1. I copied the appCompat directory under the SDK over to my project. It is now one of the top-level directories along with libs, res, src etc.

2. I added the library to my project:

    android update project --target 1 --path . --library .\\appCompat 

   (--target 1 refers to api level 22 on my system.)

3. I generated build files for the appCompat project:

    cd appCompat android update lib-project --target 1 --path . 

4. I went back to my project and attempted building it:

    cd .. ant clean debug 

   Everything goes smoothly until I get the following:

    -dex: [dex] input: C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\bin\\classes [dex] input: C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\appcompat\\bin\\classes.jar [dex] input: C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\appcompat\\libs\\android-support-v4.jar [dex] input: C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\appcompat\\libs\\android-support-v7-appcompat.jar [dex] Pre-Dexing C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\appcompat\\libs\\android-support-v4.jar -> android-support-v4-7d4b9d18b52617b1310b8c2397abe6b7.jar [dex] Pre-Dexing C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\appcompat\\libs\\android-support-v7-appcompat.jar -> android-support-v7-appcompat-af2360631cde3dc57c1fde6f23204ddb.jar [dex] Converting compiled files and external libraries into C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\bin\\classes.dex... [dx] [dx] UNEXPECTED TOP-LEVEL EXCEPTION: [dx] java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\\Users\\Tuukka\\Documents\\app\\appcompat\\bin\\classes.jar (No such file or directory) 

There is indeed no classes.jar in appCompat\\bin. In fact, after looking through the entire build output, it seems such a thing was never built, yet Ant seems to expect that it exists.

Is there something I'm missing here? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I think this problem is caused by the project not being set up as a library project. If you are setting up everything by hand you can fix this by adding android.library=true to the [your project]/appCompat/project.properties file.