Develop Reference

Migrating from Eclipse to Android Studio and library issues

I have decided to migrate my projects from Eclipse to Android Studio and I am finding a lot of difficulties in doing so. The biggest problem I have is the following:
I have several applications that are using some common projects (libraries). When importing an application into Android Studio, it detects the referenced libraries and adds them to the application (copies the folders of the libraries under the application folder). This is something I do not want to do because the libraries are common for more that 1 applications so I want them to be at the same directory level as the application folder and just reference them from the application. How is this done in Android Studio? In Eclipse, you would just add a reference from the project properties. Furthermore, how do I import a library project in Android Studio? I would like to import each of the libraries as separate projects and build them individually.
Is there any good tutorial about this? I have a lot of experience with Eclipse but I am completely new to Gradle.
Here is an example of what I mean:
I have two projects, ProjectA and ProjectB. They both use some library projects developed by me, LibA and LibB. All 4 projects are under the same folder called Applications - the two libraries are therefore common and if I change one of them I only need to recompile both projects. After importing ProjectA into Android Studio (having the latest version), the import process created the following structure. Under the base folder, Studio Applications, I have a folder for the project named ProjectA. Under folder ProjectA, I have another folder, ProjectA (where the main project files are) and two more folders, LibA and LibB. What I would like to have is have the two library projects imported separately (as library projects in Android Studio) and under the main application folder have only the ProjectA folder (and the rest of the standard gradle folders, ie, .gradle, .idea, build etc).
How can this be done? I need two things: First, import a library project from Eclipse into Android Studio and then import a project but instead of having the libraries copied under the project path, reference them.

Just import your apps with no project libs (I'm assuming the libs are available in maven)
After that you just need to add the dependencies in gradle file
// your gradle file inside your app folder
dependencies {
compile 'com.squareup.okhttp:okhttp:2.3.0' // example of importing okhttp
compile 'com.facebook.android:facebook-android-sdk:4.1.1' // example importing facebook sdk
compile project(':name_of_local_project') // local project
}
and if you want to include a project of another folder (different project)
add this to settings.gradle
project(':module1').projectDir = new File(settingsDir, '../another_path')
It's a simpler approach, and you get the ability to update the lib without much work

The problem was that I had proguard enabled for the library modules as well. Proguard was obfuscating class and function names in the library modules and they were not found in the app that was referencing them. Moving/merging the proguard files in the app was the solution.

Avoid code duplication in Android Studio modules

I've created a project and a library separately using Android Studio, each in a separate folder inside some directory.
I tried to add the library as a module to the project, and noticed that instead of just referencing the library like in Eclipse, the library was copied inside the project directory.
That means that if this happened N times for N projects, then I'll have N copies of the library and I'll need to update them all when any update is to be done.
I'm working on v 1.0.2 of Android Studio.
Any one has a better idea to do it?

Three options I know of:
You can specify the path to the external library:
Android studio add external project to build.gradle
Include the compiled jar file from the library in the libs directory of the N apps.
Publish the artifact (the jar from library project) to a gradle repository and then you can add dependencies to that project just like you would for the support library etc.
See http://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/artifact_management.html

Library Project Supporting Eclipse and Android Studio

I'm working on a library project that provides access to a service. We started the project few months ago and we were supporting Eclipse only (since Android Studio was a prewview edition).
Now that Android Studio has become a "beta" version, and its popularity has increased greatly, we had the intention to support it as welll, but we are facing the problem of how to support both "styles" with the same base (project structure and code).
The library we are building has a UI that forced us to have the library as library project instead of just a simple jar. We have this project working with ANT to build the required files (jars) and packaging everthing in a library project.
Android Studio now introduces the .aar library files, that can also contain UI.
So our problem is finding examples of other library projects containing UI that are also supporting both IDE's. Wondering if someone else have face this same situation.
Is is possible to have a Library Project to support both IDEs? (Eclipse and Android Studio)

Thanks to #CommonsWare. When I looked at your projects I realize that we didn't need our project to be "Android Studio compatible". Since we wanted to share the project as an .aar file, I had only to make a build.gradle at the root of my library project and add the gradle folder (containing the gradle wrapper jars).
In this way I can use the console and create a .aar file using "./gradlew aR" command. Now I can distribute the library project for Eclipse users or the .aar file for Android Studio users.
I'm testing the .aar file, and the only problem I have right now is that classes inside a jar file within libs folder inside the .aar file are not recognized, just the classes present inside "classes.jar", but I think I would create another question here in SOF since is not relevant for this question.

Android Studio Library Project Not Generating Jar File

How do I build a JAR file from an Android Studio project? I've followed a lot of guides without much success. I tried compiling as a regular and library project but no JAR file get automatically generated. Do I have to do it manually or resort to Ant to get the Jar file?

Android Studio will compile your library into an AAR not a JAR. AARs are a little different since we rely on the SDK rather than a JAR to give use the Android API.
You will find the AAR under LibraryName/build/libs/LibraryName.aar.

Project libraries which include jars (such as support v7 and play services) aren't working correctly

I switched over to Android Studio a few months ago, but only until recently did I ever add or remove library modules from my project. I've run into a problem where simply including the library module (such as google play services) is insufficient in getting my app to compile.
I made sure the library module uses its own jar as a dependency. The references jar can be seen here:
But unless I include both the library project AND this jar library onto my main app module as a dependency, the app will not compile. I was under the impression that just including the library itself ought to be enough, because it includes all the res/ files AND the jar itself which contains the java files.
I get it to work by doing the following:
But shouldn't just the 1 project library/module be enough? If you look you can see I need to do the same with Android v7's appcompat library.

You don't need to add the the compiled module (the .jar file) in the dependencies of itself module.
In other words, once you import your module to your project, the only other thing you should have to do is to add it as a module dependency to your project.
When you add the module library, Android Studio will automatically generate/add the .jar file to libraries and then to your project's dependencies.
Module Dependencies
Google Play Services Library
Main Project Module Dependencies