compilerOptions.preserveSymlinks: true causes ts-plugin(2305) error in "vue" module

[YKDZ]

While attempting various fixes for issues related to pnpm's system link, I noticed that setting compilerOptions.preserveSymlinks to true in tsconfig.json causes all imports from the "vue" module to report ts-plugin(2305) errors. I have not encountered the same issue with imports from other modules.

I would like to know whether this is an expected behavior or a potential issue?

Here is a reproduction repository for this issue.

[vofronte]

Hi @YKDZ!

Hey, I cloned your repo to check it out, but I'm not getting the error on my machine.

It's almost certainly that "preserveSymlinks": true setting in your tsconfig.app.json. That option usually breaks things with pnpm. pnpm is all about symlinks, and preserveSymlinks tells TS to not follow them to the real files... so it gets lost and cant find the types for vue.

Have you tried just removing that line? You probably don't need that option anyway, it's mostly for specific monorepo setups.

Out of curiosity, what version of VSCode and the Volar extension you on? And what OS? Maybe thats the difference why I'm not seeing it.

[YKDZ]

Hi. Yes, I really don't need 'preserveSymlinks': true, it's just my attempt. I am currently using:

Version: 1.104.0 (user setup)
Commit: f220831ea2d946c0dcb0f3eaa480eb435a2c1260
Date: 2025-09-10T06:46:18.035Z
Electron: 37.3.1
ElectronBuildId: 12342881
Chromium: 138.0.7204.235
Node.js: 22.18.0
V8: 13.8.258.31-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100

and volar 3.0.6.

[vofronte]

Ah, gotcha. My bet is on the OS then. I'm use Linux.

Symlinks can be a bit tricky on Windows, and it looks like the combination of VS Code's file watching + TypeScript's resolver + pnpm's symlink structure just doesn't play nice with preserveSymlinks: true on that platform.

The official pnpm docs have a section on TypeScript and they explicitly warn against using preserveSymlinks. Basically, they say "don't do it" because it completely breaks how TS finds the type definition files. (https://pnpm.io/typescript#do-not-preserve-symlinks)

So your original problem was a classic, documented configuration issue. Good that you don't actually need that flag anyway! :)

[vofronte]

Oh, and if you ever do find yourself needing preserveSymlinks for another project, it looks like the fix is to add node-linker=hoisted to a .npmrc file. It forces pnpm to create a flat node_modules like npm/yarn, which solves the problem. Good to know.