Confluent Kafka on Windows: How to fix Classpath is empty. Please build the project first e.g. by running ‘gradlew jarAll’ error

You may encounter the below error while trying to start zookeeper in Confluent Kafka version on windows platform.

This could look something like this :

Start Zookeeper :

D:\confluent-community-5.5.0–2.12\confluent-5.5.0\bin\windows>zookeeper-server-start.bat D:\confluent-community-5.5.0–2.12\confluent-5.5.0\etc\kafka\zookeeper.properties

Error :

Classpath is empty. Please build the project first e.g. by running ‘gradlew jarAll’

How to fix this error ?:

Step 1 : Navigate to \confluent-community-5.5.0–2.12\confluent-5.5.0\bin\windows folder.

Step 2: Open kafka-run-class.bat file.

Step 3 : Search rem Classpath addition for core in this bat file.The code would look like this :

Step 4: Now, just add the below code just above the rem Classpath addition for core line.

rem classpath addition for LSB style path
if exist %BASE_DIR%\share\java\kafka\* (
call:concat %BASE_DIR%\share\java\kafka\*
)

Your code should look like this :

Step 5: Now, again try to run zookeeper with properties file and it should work fine this time.

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