yarn workspaces adds empty folder instead of local dependency

Question

Settings

Windows 11
WSL 2 terminal

My repo

my basic directory structure looks like this:

backend
  src
  package.json
frontend
  apps
    admin
      src
      package.json
    user-type-1
      src
      package.json
  core
    utils
    common
  package.json
package.json
yarn.lock

my root package.json looks like this:

{
  "private": true,
  "name": "root",
  "workspaces": {
    "packages": [
      "backend",
      "frontend"
    ]
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": "^20.5.1"
  },
  "packageManager": "[email protected]",
  "scripts: { ... }
  "dependencies": {
    "typescript": "^5.1.6",
    ...
  }
  ...
}

my backend package.json looks like this:

{
  "private": true,
  "name": "@project/backend",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts: { ... }
  ...
}

my frontend package.json looks like this:

{
    "name": "@project/frontend",
    "private": true,
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "workspaces": {
        "packages": [
            "apps/admin",
            "apps/user-type-1",
            "core"
        ]
    },
    "engines": {
        "node": "^20.5.1"
    },
    "packageManager": "[email protected]",
    "scripts: { ... },
    "dependencies": {
      "@project/backend": "1.0.0",
      ...
    }
    ...
}

The backend has a bunch of things that the frontend needs, so I want to add the backend ad a dependency for the frontend.
I tried running the following:

yarn workspace @project/frontend add @project/[email protected]

Expected Behavior

• A folder @project/backend is added inside the frontend's node_modules
• I am able to access backend types and more with import
• no errors are thrown in the process

Actual Behaviour

• A folder named @project is created inside frontend's node-modules, but it's empty
• I cannot access backend types when using import
• no errors are thrown in the process

Importing the backend from the frontend was previously working, so I am guessing this is not an issue with yarn but with some changes that I made.
However I was unable to find out what caused the yarn to fail, even after returning the package.json mostly the same as it was before.

Answer 1

I will update the answer if I manage to find out more about this, please share if you have any clues

The issue seems to be with yarn wsl 2 adaptation.
I am not sure if the same happens on Ubuntu, but apparently yarn doesn't create the folders when running on wsl (not sure if it is intentional).

Once you run yarn install on wsl the local node_module folders will remain empty even after re-running the command on powershell unless you delete the yarn.lock and node_modules.

After cloning and testing on MacOS there were no such issues.

I guess deleting the yarn.lock and re-running yarn install on powershell instead of wsl could be counted as a solution, but it doesn't sound right...

Also keep in mind that even if the folder is empty you will still be able to deploy the server locally (how??) yarn run dev seemed to be working even with the red underlines on all the imports due to the empty node_module package folder