What causes "Invalid dependency description ' '" in quarkusio/quarkus?

Use full coordinates 'groupId:artifactId:version[:classifier]' with at least groupId:artifactId

quarkusio/quarkus · error · IllegalArgumentException

Invalid dependency description '<dependency>'

Error message

Invalid dependency description '<dependency>'

What it means

MojoUtils.parseDependency throws IllegalArgumentException when a dependency string cannot be split into the expected groupId:artifactId[:version[:classifier]] segments. The library requires at least 2 colon-separated segments to build a Maven Dependency object.

Source

Thrown at independent-projects/tools/devtools-common/src/main/java/io/quarkus/maven/utilities/MojoUtils.java:108

                .anyMatch(d -> groupId.equals(d.getGroupId())
                        && artifactId.equals(d.getArtifactId()));
    }

    public static Dependency parse(String dependency) {
        Dependency res = new Dependency();
        String[] segments = dependency.split(":");
        if (segments.length >= 2) {
            res.setGroupId(segments[0].toLowerCase());
            res.setArtifactId(segments[1].toLowerCase());
            if (segments.length >= 3 && !segments[2].isEmpty()) {
                res.setVersion(segments[2]);
            }
            if (segments.length >= 4) {
                res.setClassifier(segments[3].toLowerCase());
            }
            return res;
        } else {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid dependency description '" + dependency + "'");
        }
    }

    /**
     * Builds the configuration for the goal using Elements
     *
     * @param elements A list of elements for the configuration section
     * @return The elements transformed into the Maven-native XML format
     */
    public static Xpp3Dom configuration(Element... elements) {
        Xpp3Dom dom = new Xpp3Dom("configuration");
        for (Element e : elements) {
            dom.addChild(e.toDom());
        }
        return dom;
    }

    /**

View on GitHub (pinned to e1c734241f)

Solutions

Use full coordinates 'groupId:artifactId:version[:classifier]' with at least groupId:artifactId
Check for typos such as a missing or doubled colon
If only the extension name is known, use the Quarkus extension catalog format (artifactId only is allowed by add-extension, but not by parseDependency)
Trim whitespace and stray quotes from the dependency string

Example fix

// before
MojoUtils.parseDependency("quarkus-jdbc-postgresql");
// after
MojoUtils.parseDependency("io.quarkus:quarkus-jdbc-postgresql:3.15.0");

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

boolean ok = dep != null && dep.trim().split(":", -1).length >= 2 && !dep.trim().isEmpty();
if (!ok) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Dependency must be groupId:artifactId[:version[:classifier]]: " + dep);

Type guard

static boolean isCoordinateFormat(String s) {
    return s != null && s.matches("[^:]+:[^:]+(:[^:]+)?(:[^:]+)?");
}

Try / catch

try {
    Dependency d = MojoUtils.parseDependency(dep);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
    log.error("Bad dependency format '{}': use groupId:artifactId:version", dep);
}

Prevention

Always pass full Maven coordinates groupId:artifactId:version
Trim user input before parsing
Validate format with a regex before calling parseDependency
When accepting extension names from users, use the add-extension name-catalog path instead of raw coordinates

When it happens

Trigger: Calling MojoUtils.parseDependency (or install/extension goals that parse dependency parameters) with a string like 'foo' or an empty/null-ish string that yields fewer than 4... fewer than 2 segments after splitting on ':'.

Common situations: Passing a bare artifact name without groupId on the CLI (quarkus:add-extension -Dextensions='myext' style mistakes), typos with missing colon, extra whitespace, or copied Maven coordinates in a non-colon format (gradle notation 'group:name:version' works, but 'name - version' does not).

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of quarkusio/quarkus@e1c734241f (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4a558a969d711527. Report an issue: GitHub.