Type alias with an import type links to the module, not the referenced type

[blutorange]

Search terms

type alias link reference declare module

Steps to reproduce the bug

Just tried your fix for #2778, works perfectly. Unrelated to that, though, I did notice another strange behavior regarding links to type aliases:

declare module "bar" {
    export interface Bar {}
}
declare module "foo" {
    export type Foo = import("bar").Bar;
}

When you generate the docs, the type alias Foo in module foo links to the module bar, instead of directly to the interface Bar.

(Which also results in a missing reference when using typedoc-plugin-merge-modules, since, well, the module does not exist anymore as it was merged).

npx typedoc --entryPoints dist/demo.d.ts --out docs-demo

Interestingly, this only happens when using an import type. Importing the symbol first seems to work:

// demo.d.ts
declare module "bar" {
    export interface Bar {}
}

declare module "foo" {
    import { Bar } from "bar";
    export type Foo = Bar;
}

It also seems to happen with declare module "name", but not when using separate files bar.ts and foo.ts.

Expected Behavior

TypeDoc should link directly to the referenced type.

Actual Behavior

TypeDoc links to the the module containing that type.

Environment

• Typedoc version: 876c690
• TypeScript version: 5.6.3
• Node.js version: v20.18.0
• OS: Linux 6.8.0-35-generic #35-Ubuntu x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Gerrit0]

How on earth has nobody noticed this before... I'm pretty sure it's been there for at least 4 years at this point.

[blutorange]

I guess because it only happens with declare module, which isn't that common (and was previously converted to namespaces). In our case, after some experimenting, I found creating a merged declaration file with declare module to be the best option.

Anyways, I just tried out your change and it works as expected. With that, I think I now also have a working setup for generating a nice looking documentation for primefaces/primefaces#12717 Thanks again for fixing this so quickly.