Starting 22.2.4 external modules are not excluded from @nx/esbuild bundle

[ayashkov]

Current Behavior

After migrating from 22.2.3 to 22.2.4, the bundle produced by @nx/esbuild plugin now includes 3rd party libraries into the bundle, in my case rxjs. This behavior can be mitigated by explicitly setting targets.build.options.external to ["rxjs"].

Expected Behavior

By default, I expect the bundle not to include 3rd party libraries without the need to list them explicitly in the plugin's options.

GitHub Repo

https://github.com/granito-source/vitest-marbles/tree/v1.0.2

Steps to Reproduce

1. Execute nx migrate 22.2.4 in the repo.
2. Run nx run-many -t build.
3. Inspect the produced dist/vitest-marbles/index.js to see that it inlines rxjs library.
4. Set nx.targets.build.options.external to ["rxjs"] in package.json.
5. Run nx run-many -t build --skip-nx-cache.
6. Inspect the produced dist/vitest-marbles/index.js to see that it no longer inlines the library.

Nx Report

Node           : 24.12.0
OS             : darwin-arm64
Native Target  : aarch64-macos
npm            : 11.6.2

nx (global)    : 22.3.3
nx             : 22.2.4
@nx/js         : 22.2.4
@nx/workspace  : 22.2.4
@nx/devkit     : 22.2.4
@nx/esbuild    : 22.2.4
@nx/vitest     : 22.2.4
typescript     : 5.9.3
---------------------------------------
Registered Plugins:
@nx/vitest
---------------------------------------
Cache Usage: 0.00 B / 92.64 GB

Failure Logs

Package Manager Version

No response

Operating System

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows
• Other (Please specify)

Additional Information

The same issue exists in 22.2.7 and in 22.3.3.