[Bug?]: Can no longer run scripts with yarn that have a colon in their name

[adamreisnz]

Self-service

• I'd be willing to implement a fix

Describe the bug

We use "scoped" script names in our package.json, and recently, some of those have stopped working, with Yarn complaining that the script can't be found.

For example:

"dev:vite": "NODE_ENV=development bin/vite dev",

And running it results in:

yarn dev:vite
Usage Error: Couldn't find a script named "vite".

This used to work fine up until very recently.

To reproduce

Create a package.json file with scripts for dev and dev:vite. Try to run the script with yarn dev:vite. Observe that it doesn't work.

Environment

System:
    OS: macOS 15.5
    CPU: (8) arm64 Apple M1 Pro
  Binaries:
    Node: 24.3.0 - /private/var/folders/vs/jmkpdfzx2sv_f3zxdb_ds4pm0000gn/T/xfs-141f1ee9/node
    Yarn: 4.9.2 - /private/var/folders/vs/jmkpdfzx2sv_f3zxdb_ds4pm0000gn/T/xfs-141f1ee9/yarn
    npm: 11.4.2 - ~/.n/bin/npm

Additional context

There is no issue with running yarn dev, nor with other scripts with a colon like yarn lint:eslint, so perhaps the issue is exclusive to the keyword "dev".

[arcanis]

You probably have multiple workspaces with the same global script name, in which case they cease to be globally available (see yarn run).

[adamreisnz]

I don't use workspaces in this project (or other projects) though. I have several repositories which all have the same commands, but that doesn't explain it either, as other commands with a colon in their name still work fine. I thought maybe it was related to dev somehow being a keyword, and the command parser getting confused by it.