Misleading documentation on externals type or potential bug

[dmitrysteblyuk]

The documentation makes us believe that this example:

module.exports = {
  //...
  externals: {
    jquery: 'jQuery'
  }
};

will result in jquery imports to be replaced with jQuery variable:

In other words, when a string is provided it will be treated as root (defined above and below).

root: The library should be available as a global variable (e.g. via a script tag).

However it's not exactly true.
The default type of externals is defined by externalsType option. Which is by default defined as follows:

https://github.com/webpack/webpack/blob/master/lib/config/defaults.js#L189-L198

So for example in case of commonjs library target import $ from 'jquery'; will be transformed to require("jQuery").

[webpack-bot]

For maintainers only:

• webpack-4
• webpack-5
• bug
• critical-bug
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• question

[sokra]

Yes the documentation may need some improvements here. Good that you discovered that. Do you want to send a PR to improve the documentation?

[dmitrysteblyuk]

So it's the expected behaviour then?
I guess then external type ideally should always be set explicitly like jquery: 'var jQuery' (so that it works no matter which library target is selected later on).

Do you want to send a PR

sure, I'll see what I can do.