[api-extractor]: Internal Error: Unable to follow symbol for "WebdriverIO"

[Jym77]

Summary

Tried to run API extractor on a file using the WebdriverIO type from webdriverio package.
API extractor does not manage to find the type. I think this is linked to the fact that webdriverio declares WebdriverIO as a global symbol (using declare global { namespace WebdriverIO { … } }) whose typing (in my code) is ensured through a triple-slash directive (/// <reference types="webdriverio" />).

API extractor just crashes in that situation (instead of, e.g., exporting a plain text symbol).

This used to work on previous version of webdriver, where the triple-slash was on webdriverio/async, but that's not the way to go with latest version.

The TS code builds without problems (crashes if I remove the directive). The code is stripped down to just using the WebdriveIO.Browser type.

Repro steps

Failing action on a minimal repro repository.

Successful extraction on the real repo, using the previous major version of webdriverio.

Expected result: API extractor should be able to find the global type through the triple-slash directive, the same way TS does. Otherwise, outputting a plain text symbol would be better than crashing.

Actual result: Crash with error Internal Error: Unable to follow symbol for "WebdriverIO"

Details

Single file in my repo:

/// <reference types="webdriverio" />

/**
 * @public
 */
  export function foo(browser: WebdriverIO.Browser): void {
    return
}

TS config:

{
  "$schema": "http://json.schemastore.org/tsconfig",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "composite": true,
    "declaration": true,
    "declarationMap": true,
    "incremental": true,
    "sourceMap": true,

    "target": "es2020",
    "lib": ["es2020", "DOM"],
    "module": "commonjs",
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "strict": true
  }
}

The esModuleInterop may have something to do with this. It is needed due to how the latest webdriverio is packaged. It is a change in the config compared to previous (working) iteration.

Standard questions

Please answer these questions to help us investigate your issue more quickly:

Question	Answer
@microsoft/api-extractor version?
Operating system?	Linux Debian in a WSL1 box
API Extractor scenario?	reporting
Would you consider contributing a PR?	No (no idea what goes wrong)
TypeScript compiler version?	5.4.5
Node.js version (node -v)?	20.7.0

WebdriverIO version: 8.38.2 (worked with 7.20.5)