npm ci creates wrong symlink

[nakagawa424]

I'm opening this issue because:

• npm is crashing.
• npm is producing an incorrect install.
• npm is doing something I don't understand.
• npm is producing incorrect or undesirable behavior.
• Other (see below for feature requests):

What's going wrong?

How can the CLI team reproduce the problem?

p.tar.gz

$ tar xzvf p.tar.gz
$ for i in a b c; do (cd p/$i; npm ci); done
...
npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open ' ... /p/c/node_modules/b/node_modules/a/package.json'
...
$ ls -l p/c/node_modules/b/node_modules/a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nakagawa nakagawa 13 Jul 13 01:12 p/c/node_modules/b/node_modules/a -> ../../../../a

npm i works fine.

$ rm -rf p/?/node_modules
$ for i in a b c; do (cd p/$i; npm i); done
$ ls -l p/c/node_modules/b/node_modules/a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nakagawa nakagawa 7 Jul 13 01:09 p/c/node_modules/b/node_modules/a -> ../../a

supporting information:

• npm -v prints:6.1.0
• node -v prints:v10.6.0
• npm config get registry prints:https://registry.npmjs.org/
• Windows, OS X/macOS, or Linux?:Linux
• Network issues:
  • Geographic location where npm was run:
  • I use a proxy to connect to the npm registry.
  • I use a proxy to connect to the web.
  • I use a proxy when downloading Git repos.
  • I access the npm registry via a VPN
  • I don't use a proxy, but have limited or unreliable internet access.
• Container:
  • I develop using Vagrant on Windows.
  • I develop using Vagrant on OS X or Linux.
  • I develop / deploy using Docker.
  • I deploy to a PaaS (Triton, Heroku).