Android C++ Shared Library Help

I am learning Android/C++ and need help using shared libraries, so this project is really a tutorial. I've spent a lot of time googling and experimenting but just cannot import my test .so library into another Android Application Project. I do not want to copy the library into the main project, as it will be used multiple times in the future... I'd like to be able to reference it somehow so I can compile my project and also have auto-complete for the libraries classes/methods work in my IDE (I'm currently using Eclipse ADT). Any updates made to the library should be automatically picked up in the main project. Doing this using only a make file (if possible) would be preferable to using IDE settings, in case I want to change IDE in the future. Please ask any questions. Thanks in advance.