react-native does not store .aar and build files in /android folder since 0.71

[fabOnReact]

I'm interested in this project as I'm trying to accomplish something similar with react-native-improved.

I believe you can not patch the ReactAndroid .aar since 0.71, because they are uploaded to maven.

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/tree/1d89fad8245e6a6d50cb73192f4252ff074d5b65/packages/react-native/android
react-native-community/discussions-and-proposals#508
https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-proposals/blob/4a06fc6497c8e88d01502b0721d1c814ebc1fb61/proposals/0508-out-of-npm-artifacts.md#dedicated-maven-repository

I believe the file is uploaded with this job, we could modify it to upload it to a different maven remote
https://github.com/fabriziobertoglio1987/react-native/blob/1eb4bf0d3af1fe267f5de6bf4bbe1e65d41fea1b/packages/react-native/ReactAndroid/publish.gradle#L41

and the remote is set here, so changing it could allow us to patch the ReactAndroid libraries
https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/1eb4bf0d3af1fe267f5de6bf4bbe1e65d41fea1b/settings.gradle.kts#L17

in my project, I create new APIs based on the ReactTextView and the other React android APIs, but requires to re-implement the APIs (text.js and their native impl).

The advantage is that it will be easier to do lean core, as the APIs already implemented as third party library, but it is more time consuming, because every Android API needs to be re-implemented.

I'm not sure about iOS, but I believe you can patch javascript and iOS files without issues.