Unable to install direct from git branch

[daikema]

When attempting to install direct from a git branch using npm 9.8.1 on a VM with few node packages preinstalled I encounter errors like this:

npm info run [email protected] postinstall { code: 0, signal: null }
npm verb stack Error: command failed
npm verb stack     at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/promise-spawn/lib/index.js:53:27)
npm verb stack     at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:513:28)
npm verb stack     at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1100:16)
npm verb stack     at Socket.<anonymous> (node:internal/child_process:458:11)
npm verb stack     at Socket.emit (node:events:513:28)
npm verb stack     at Pipe.<anonymous> (node:net:301:12)
npm verb pkgid [email protected]
npm verb cwd /home/ubuntu/tmp_carta
npm verb Linux 5.4.0-139-generic
npm verb node v16.20.1
npm verb npm  v9.8.1
npm ERR! code 127
npm ERR! path /usr/lib/node_modules/carta-controller/node_modules/carta-frontend
npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! command sh -c patch-package
npm ERR! sh: 1: patch-package: not found

This is in spite of patch-package being listed as a devDependency in the package.json. The docs for npm suggest that the presence of any of a few scripts in the package.json will check out all deps and trigger a build, and our package.json has a prepare section which is one of those fields. I tested adding the devDependencies as regular dependencies and installing from a git branch still failed, so it seems that it's not just a case of only dependencies (vs also devDependencies) being installed.