deno x npm:pagefind seemingly fails silently (doesn't spawn child process?)

• Deno version: 2.9.6
• Node.js version: 26.8.2
• Environment: macOS 27.0

On my system, this command prints nothing (except that Deno asks to install the package if it isn't cached):

deno x npm:[email protected] --version

But Deno exits with exit code 0 (success).

npx executes the pagefind executable and prints its version (as expected):

npx run pagefind 1.5.2

pagefind 1.5.2

Is this to be expected or a bug?

More info

Looking at the Pagefind package https://www.npmjs.com/package/pagefind/v/1.5.2:

• Pagefind's package.json specifies a .cjs file under "bin":

   "bin": "lib/runner/bin.cjs",
  

• The pagefind NPM module is a wrapper for a platform-native binary written in Rust.

• The lib/runner/bin.cjs file determines the path for the platform-native binary and uses Nodes child_process.spawnSync API to execute it.

• I can tell that deno x does execute the bin.cjs file by passing --verbose to Pagefind (the bin.cjs script recognizes the --verbose flag and prints some debug logs):

  deno x npm:[email protected] --version --verbose
  

  Output:

  pagefind npm wrapper: Running the executable at /Users/xyz/Library/Caches/deno/deno_x_cache/[email protected]/node_modules/.deno/@[email protected]/node_modules/@pagefind/darwin-arm64/bin/pagefind_extended
  pagefind npm wrapper: Process exited with status 0
  

  (You'll find these messages in the lib/runner/bin.cjs source code)

• The place where it fails seems to be the spawning of the child process (at path /Users/xyz/Library/Caches/deno/deno_x_cache/[email protected]/node_modules/.deno/@[email protected]/node_modules/@pagefind/darwin-arm64/bin/pagefind_extended in my example, see logging above). It looks like deno x never spawns this child process (thus there's no output).

• I also tried running deno x with --allow-run or --allow-all and various other permission combinations, but always got the same result.