Direct local .aar file dependencies are not supported when building an AAR.

[zabojad]

I have 3 rn modules that uses aar files. They reference it in their own build.gradle file like this:

compile files('libs/mylib.aar')

Until now, it was working fine.

I recently upgraded my app project from react native 0.63 to react native 0.66 and now when I assembleRelease it, I get:

Direct local .aar file dependencies are not supported when building an AAR. The resulting AAR would be broken because the classes and Android resources from any local .aar file dependencies would not be packaged in the resulting AAR. Previous versions of the Android Gradle Plugin produce broken AARs in this case too (despite not throwing this error).

I workaround the problem by importing those aar files in my app's build.gradle file but that sucks, my app should not be aware of those aar files at all...

Is there any way to use aar files in rn modules now with gradle 4.2+ ?