Can I build an android apk without "gradle" on command line?

Question

Is it possible to create an apk without gradle via command line? My application consists of both kotlin and C++ code. Currently I used separate compilers for both kotlin and c++ code and compile them.

Now I also got a requirement of many resource files (like Xml files, png files etc.,).

I have gone through one of the links but they mentioned about 'aapt' and not about 'aapt2' because in Android documentation's command line tools only aapt2 is available.

I have also tried only compiling resource files via aapt2 which gave me some binary file with (.flat/.arsc.flat) extensions. After compiling these resource files I have added these binary files in -cp flag of kotlinc command but faced unresolved reference errors.

Can someone please tell me how to achieve this in a correct way? Help would be appreciated.