Awesome

Xamarin.GradleBindings - Adding Java libs to Xamarin.Android is as simple as "Adding Reference" in VS.

Link to extensions gallery: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3a3257c7-473a-4790-9610-9a561eed0b8c

How do java developers add dependencies to their projects? Yes that's right, via gradle (something like this or that). As you can see some java-projects use those dependencies a lot so it'd be nice to use those huge amount of 3rd party libraries in your Xamarin project, right? I believe this Add-in for Visual Studio 2017 will help you with it:

How to use

Step 1: Execute the command over "References" folder

Step 2: Set an external dependency id and a name for Xamarin Android Binding Project (will be generated). This dialog will allow you to specify custom repositories as well soon.

The Plugin executes gradle scripts and receives dependencies list (including transitive ones). At this step you can select or deselect needed binaries (transitive dependencies are deselected by default). NOTE: you'd better use "Xamarin Components" or directly NuGet for Support dependencies (v4, RecyclerView, AppCompact, etc..).

Step 3: The binding project will be generated but you still may have to fix some issues via Metadata.xml because the Add-in is not smart enough. For our example you will have to change visibility of DialogBase class because it's private in Java and C# doesn't support deriving public classes from private ones. So just add it to the Transforms/Metadata.xml (more info here):

<attr path="/api/package[@name='com.afollestad.materialdialogs']/class[@name='DialogBase']" name="visibility">public</attr>

Step 4: Now you are ready to use them! i.e. the Material Dialogs:

Enjoy!