Could not resolve "jquery" error with gradle build

[LukasLeppich]

I get the following error with quarkus-web-bundler when I try to build with gradlew build

X  Could not resolve "jquery"

    web/app.js:14:14:
      14 Ôöé import $ from 'jquery'
         ÔòÁ               ~~~~~~~~

  You can mark the path "jquery" as external to exclude it from the bundle, which will remove this
  error and leave the unresolved path in the bundle.


> Task :quarkusAppPartsBuild FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':quarkusAppPartsBuild'.
> There was a failure while executing work items
   > A failure occurred while executing io.quarkus.gradle.tasks.worker.BuildWorker
      > io.quarkus.builder.BuildException: Build failure: Build failed due to errors
                [error]: Build step io.quarkiverse.web.bundler.deployment.BundleProcessor#bundle threw an exception: io.mvnpm.esbuild.BundlingException: EsBuild Bundling failed
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.deno.DenoRunner.scriptLog(DenoRunner.java:152)
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.deno.DenoRunner.waitForExit(DenoRunner.java:96)
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.deno.DenoRunner.runDenoScript(DenoRunner.java:50)
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.script.BuildScript.build(BuildScript.java:41)
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.script.ScriptRunner.build(ScriptRunner.java:32)
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.Bundler.esBuild(Bundler.java:125)
                at io.mvnpm.esbuild.Bundler.bundle(Bundler.java:33)
                at io.quarkiverse.web.bundler.deployment.BundleProcessor.bundleAndProcess(BundleProcessor.java:68)
                at io.quarkiverse.web.bundler.deployment.BundleProcessor.bundle(BundleProcessor.java:58)
                at java.base/java.lang.invoke.MethodHandle.invokeWithArguments(MethodHandle.java:733)
                at io.quarkus.deployment.ExtensionLoader$3.execute(ExtensionLoader.java:898)
                at io.quarkus.builder.BuildContext.run(BuildContext.java:255)
                at org.jboss.threads.ContextHandler$1.runWith(ContextHandler.java:18)
                at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor$Task.doRunWith(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:2651)
                at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor$Task.run(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:2630)
                at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor.runThreadBody(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:1622)
                at org.jboss.threads.EnhancedQueueExecutor$ThreadBody.run(EnhancedQueueExecutor.java:1589)
                at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1583)
                at org.jboss.threads.JBossThread.run(JBossThread.java:501)


* Try:
> Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace.
> Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
> Run with --scan to get full insights from a Build Scan (powered by Develocity).
> Get more help at https://help.gradle.org.

BUILD FAILED in 6s
8 actionable tasks: 2 executed, 6 up-to-date

Reproduce:

1. Clone https://github.com/LukasLeppich/quarkus-web-bundler-resolve-bug
2. Execute gradlew build

This is basically an empty project from https://code.quarkus.io/ with the Web Bundler extension, Java 21 and gradle.
This doesn't work out of the box, you have to manually add the id("io.mvnpm.gradle.plugin.native-java-plugin") version "1.0.0" plugin to the gradle build.
After adding this I was able to build the project with gradlew build.

In the next step I added the compileOnly 'org.mvnpm:jquery:3.7.1' dependency and uncomment the JQuery import in app.js import $ from 'jquery'. With this changes, the gradle build fails with the error from above.

Do I have to do something else for the gradle build to work?

Environment:
OS: Windows 11 Enterprise 10.0.26200 Build 26200
Java:

openjdk version "21.0.10" 2026-01-20 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-21.0.10+7 (build 21.0.10+7-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Temurin-21.0.10+7 (build 21.0.10+7-LTS, mixed mode, sharing)

[ia3andy]

Thanks for creating the issue I'll investigate. Sorry but you'll have to wait a bit as I will be in PTOs until the end of the month.

My suggestion is to look if the node_modules dir has been created and is a parent of the build/web-bundler dir.

[LukasLeppich]

Thank you for your feedback, no worries and enjoy your vacation.

There is a node_modules directory in the root of the project with the following content:

17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          .
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          ..
17.02.2026  14:42    <DIR>          .mvnpm
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          @bufbuild
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          @deno
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          @esbuild
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          binary-extensions
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          chokidar
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          colorjs.io
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          esbuild
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          esbuild-sass-plugin
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          function-bind
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          has-flag
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          hasown
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          immutable
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          is-core-module
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          path-parse
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          readdirp
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          resolve
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          rxjs
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          safe-identifier
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          sass
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          sass-embedded
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          source-map-js
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          supports-color
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          supports-preserve-symlinks-flag
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          sync-child-process
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          sync-message-port
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          tslib
17.02.2026  14:37    <DIR>          varint

There is no jquery directory.

When I create the same project with maven, the node_modules directory contains the jquery dependency.

[ia3andy]

Have a look there: https://github.com/ia3andy/bundler-gradle-jquery (this one works) not sure where is the diff?

[LukasLeppich]

I checked your project on two different Windows 11 systems with Java 21 (Temurin-21.0.10+7). I got the same error on both:

Ô£ÿ  Can't find stylesheet to import.
  ÔòÀ
1 Ôöé @use "bootstrap/scss/bootstrap.scss";
  Ôöé ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ÔòÁ
  web\app\app.scss 1:1  root stylesheet [plugin sass-plugin]

    app.js:2:7:
      2 Ôöé import "./web/app/app.scss";
        ÔòÁ        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Ô£ÿ  Could not resolve "jquery"

    web/app/app.ts:1:14:
      1 Ôöé import $ from 'jquery';
        ÔòÁ               ~~~~~~~~

  You can mark the path "jquery" as external to exclude it from the bundle, which will remove this
  error and leave the unresolved path in the bundle.


Ô£ÿ  Could not resolve "bootstrap-icons/font/bootstrap-icons.css"

    web/app/app.ts:2:7:
      2 Ôöé import "bootstrap-icons/font/bootstrap-icons.css";
        ÔòÁ        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  You can mark the path "bootstrap-icons/font/bootstrap-icons.css" as external to exclude it from
  the bundle, which will remove this error and leave the unresolved path in the bundle.

Update: I also checked with Fedora 43 and Java Temurin-21.0.10+7 with the same error message

[SimonScholz]

+1

I am facing the same issue using Gradle, but with htmx and alpinejs:

✘  Could not resolve "htmx.org"

    web/app.js:1:7:
      1 │ import 'htmx.org';
        ╵        ~~~~~~~~~~

  You can mark the path "htmx.org" as external to exclude it from the bundle, which will remove this
  error and leave the unresolved path in the bundle.


✘  Could not resolve "alpinejs"

    web/app.js:3:19:
      3 │ import Alpine from 'alpinejs'
        ╵                    ~~~~~~~~~~

  You can mark the path "alpinejs" as external to exclude it from the bundle, which will remove this
  error and leave the unresolved path in the bundle.

Interesting side note: When running ./gradlew quarkusDev it actually works and everything is resolved as expected.

[ia3andy]

@SimonScholz @LukasLeppich could you debug that part : https://github.com/quarkiverse/quarkus-web-bundler/blob/main/common/deployment/src/main/java/io/quarkiverse/web/bundler/deployment/WebDependenciesProcessor.java#L49

It could be a bug in the gradle ApplicationModel

This might help to debug: quarkusio/quarkus#48697

[LukasLeppich]

Is there a detailed guide somewhere on how to debug this with Gradle, preferably in VS Code? I don't have the Quarkus CLI installed, but use Gradle or Maven directly.
I have no experience with debugging Quarkus or any other builds, so I would appreciate any advice.

[ia3andy]

try this:

./gradlew build -Dorg.gradle.debug=true

then clone the web bundler locally and open it with vscode, and follow this https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/java/java-debugging (you will need to attach on port 5005), you will need to add the breakpoint also.

[LukasLeppich]

I was able to debug the build:
The buildDependencies list contains 27 dependencies (no jquery).
The runtimeDependencies list is empty.

[ia3andy]

Ok that was my guess... thanks for taking the time to debug it :) it probably means an issue in the quarkus model that we are going to investigate. Is this issue new or did you also have problems with Roq v1?

[LukasLeppich]

Unfortunetly I don't know what Roq v1 is.
This was my first project using gradle and the web-bunder extension, I used maven for my other projects.
Thank you for looking into this, I switcht the project to maven but it would be nice to have the gradle option as well.

[ia3andy]

ok issue is reproduced and I am investigating a fix. It is affecting gradle build on all os.

[ia3andy]

Good news I have a fix: quarkusio/quarkus#53040 :)