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[api-extractor] "ERROR: Internal Error: Unable to analyze the export" when using `var`

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
38/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start with the linked minimal reproduction, tale-of-export-var-and-api-extractor, and run API Extractor against its exported var declaration using the reported TypeScript and Node.js versions. Trace the API Extractor analysis path that produces the reported internal error; done means the reproduction succeeds and the exported variable is handled without that error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

I want to run api-extractor on a package interface which includes exported var values, which in d.ts manifest as
export declare var __name__: __type__

Repro steps

Minimal repro:
https://github.com/kuhe/tale-of-export-var-and-api-extractor

Expected result:

API extractor succeeds.

Actual result:

Error message:

ERROR: Internal Error: Unable to analyze the export "zero" in
/Users/***/workspace/tale-of-declare-var-and-api-extractor/lib/index.d.ts

You have encountered a software defect. Please consider reporting the issue to the maintainers of this application.

Details

Perhaps the initial reaction will be, like in https://github.com/microsoft/rushstack/issues/3353, that export var is not "recommended".
But I think that should not be up to this library, but rather the user. My team had started using api-extractor for documentation, and now find that we are unable to export vars, but unable to remove api-extractor as a dependency at the moment.

As a workaround, we will likely convert the vars into consts or lets, but shouldn't have to.

Standard questions

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

Question Answer
@microsoft/api-extractor version? 7.55.2
Operating system? Linux
API Extractor scenario? docs (.api.json)
Would you consider contributing a PR? Yes, if confirmed as unintentional
TypeScript compiler version? 5.9.3
Node.js version (node -v)? 20.5.1
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
6.5k
Forks
708
Avg merge
4d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
62

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