Configuring a development environment for Bun can take 10-30 minutes depending on your internet connection and computer speed. You will need ~10GB of free disk space for the repository and build artifacts.
If you are using Windows, please refer to this guide
Using your system's package manager, install Bun's dependencies:
{% codetabs %}
$ brew install automake ccache cmake coreutils gnu-sed go icu4c libiconv libtool ninja pkg-config rust ruby
$ sudo apt install curl wget lsb-release software-properties-common cargo ccache cmake git golang libtool ninja-build pkg-config rustc ruby-full xz-utils
$ sudo pacman -S base-devel ccache cmake git go libiconv libtool make ninja pkg-config python rust sed unzip ruby
$ sudo dnf install cargo ccache cmake git golang libtool ninja-build pkg-config rustc ruby libatomic-static libstdc++-static sed unzip which libicu-devel 'perl(Math::BigInt)'
$ sudo zypper install go cmake ninja automake git rustup && rustup toolchain install stable
{% /codetabs %}
Note: The Zig compiler is automatically installed and updated by the build scripts. Manual installation is not required.
Before starting, you will need to already have a release build of Bun installed, as we use our bundler to transpile and minify our code, as well as for code generation scripts.
{% codetabs %}
$ curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
$ npm install -g bun
$ brew tap oven-sh/bun
$ brew install bun
{% /codetabs %}
Bun requires LLVM 16 (clang
is part of LLVM). This version requirement is to match WebKit (precompiled), as mismatching versions will cause memory allocation failures at runtime. In most cases, you can install LLVM through your system package manager:
{% codetabs %}
$ brew install llvm@16
$ # LLVM has an automatic installation script that is compatible with all versions of Ubuntu
$ wget https://apt.llvm.org/llvm.sh -O - | sudo bash -s -- 16 all
$ sudo pacman -S llvm clang lld
$ sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(copr)'
$ sudo dnf copr enable -y @fedora-llvm-team/llvm-snapshots
$ sudo dnf install llvm clang lld
$ sudo zypper install clang16 lld16 llvm16
{% /codetabs %}
If none of the above solutions apply, you will have to install it manually.
Make sure Clang/LLVM 16 is in your path:
$ which clang-16
If not, run this to manually add it:
{% codetabs %}
# use fish_add_path if you're using fish
# use path+="$(brew --prefix llvm@16)/bin" if you are using zsh
$ export PATH="$(brew --prefix llvm@16)/bin:$PATH"
# use fish_add_path if you're using fish
$ export PATH="$PATH:/usr/lib/llvm16/bin"
{% /codetabs %}
⚠️ Ubuntu distributions may require installation of the C++ standard library independently. See the troubleshooting section for more information.
After cloning the repository, run the following command to run the first build. This may take a while as it will clone submodules and build dependencies.
$ bun setup
The binary will be located at ./build/bun-debug
. It is recommended to add this to your $PATH
. To verify the build worked, let's print the version number on the development build of Bun.
$ build/bun-debug --version
x.y.z_debug
To rebuild, you can invoke bun run build
$ bun run build
These two scripts, setup
and build
, are aliases to do roughly the following:
$ ./scripts/setup.sh
$ cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
$ ninja -C build # 'bun run build' runs just this
Advanced users can pass CMake flags to customize the build.
VSCode is the recommended IDE for working on Bun, as it has been configured. Once opening, you can run Extensions: Show Recommended Extensions
to install the recommended extensions for Zig and C++. ZLS is automatically configured.
If you use a different editor, make sure that you tell ZLS to use the automatically installed Zig compiler, which is located at ./.cache/zig/zig
(zig.exe
on Windows).
{% callout %}
Note: This section is outdated. The code generators are run automatically by ninja, instead of by make
.
{% /callout %}
Bun leverages a lot of code generation scripts.
The ./src/bun.js/bindings/headers.h file has bindings to & from Zig <> C++ code. This file is generated by running the following:
$ make headers
This ensures that the types for Zig and the types for C++ match up correctly, by using comptime reflection over functions exported/imported.
TypeScript files that end with *.classes.ts
are another code generation script. They generate C++ boilerplate for classes implemented in Zig. The generated code lives in:
- src/bun.js/bindings/ZigGeneratedClasses.cpp
- src/bun.js/bindings/ZigGeneratedClasses.h
- src/bun.js/bindings/generated_classes.zig To generate the code, run:
$ make codegen
Lastly, we also have a code generation script for our native stream implementations. To run that, run:
$ make generate-sink
You probably won't need to run that one much.
Certain modules like node:fs
, node:stream
, bun:sqlite
, and ws
are implemented in JavaScript. These live in src/js/{node,bun,thirdparty}
files and are pre-bundled using Bun. In debug builds, Bun automatically loads these from the filesystem, wherever it was compiled, so no need to re-run make dev
.
To build a release build of Bun, run:
$ bun run build:release
The binary will be located at ./build-release/bun
and ./build-release/bun-profile
.
On Linux, valgrind can help find memory issues.
Keep in mind:
- JavaScriptCore doesn't support valgrind. It will report spurious errors.
- Valgrind is slow
- Mimalloc will sometimes cause spurious errors when debug build is enabled
You'll need a very recent version of Valgrind due to DWARF 5 debug symbols. You may need to manually compile Valgrind instead of using it from your Linux package manager.
--fair-sched=try
is necessary if running multithreaded code in Bun (such as the bundler). Otherwise it will hang.
$ valgrind --fair-sched=try --track-origins=yes bun-debug <args>
{% callout %}
TODO: This is out of date. TLDR is pass -DUSE_DEBUG_JSC=1
or -DWEBKIT_DIR=...
to CMake. it will probably need more fiddling. ask @paperdave if you need this.
{% /callout %}
WebKit is not cloned by default (to save time and disk space). To clone and build WebKit locally, run:
# once you run this, `make submodule` can be used to automatically
# update WebKit and the other submodules
$ git submodule update --init --depth 1 --checkout src/bun.js/WebKit
# to make a jsc release build
$ make jsc
# JSC debug build does not work perfectly with Bun yet, this is actively being
# worked on and will eventually become the default.
$ make jsc-build-linux-compile-debug cpp
$ make jsc-build-mac-compile-debug cpp
Note that the WebKit folder, including build artifacts, is 8GB+ in size.
If you are using a JSC debug build and using VScode, make sure to run the C/C++: Select a Configuration
command to configure intellisense to find the debug headers.
⚠️ Please note that the instructions below are specific to issues occurring on Ubuntu. It is unlikely that the same issues will occur on other Linux distributions.
The Clang compiler typically uses the libstdc++
C++ standard library by default. libstdc++
is the default C++ Standard Library implementation provided by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). While Clang may link against the libc++
library, this requires explicitly providing the -stdlib
flag when running Clang.
Bun relies on C++20 features like std::span
, which are not available in GCC versions lower than 11. GCC 10 doesn't have all of the C++20 features implemented. As a result, running make setup
may fail with the following error:
fatal error: 'span' file not found
#include <span>
^~~~~~
The issue may manifest when initially running bun setup
as Clang being unable to compile a simple program:
The C++ compiler
"/usr/bin/clang++-16"
is not able to compile a simple test program.
To fix the error, we need to update the GCC version to 11. To do this, we'll need to check if the latest version is available in the distribution's official repositories or use a third-party repository that provides GCC 11 packages. Here are general steps:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install gcc-11 g++-11
# If the above command fails with `Unable to locate package gcc-11` we need
# to add the APT repository
$ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
# Now run `apt install` again
$ sudo apt install gcc-11 g++-11
Now, we need to set GCC 11 as the default compiler:
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-11 100
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-11 100
If you see an error on macOS when compiling libarchive
, run:
$ brew install pkg-config
If you see this error when compiling, run:
$ xcode-select --install
Bun defaults to linking libatomic
statically, as not all systems have it. If you are building on a distro that does not have a static libatomic available, you can run the following command to enable dynamic linking:
$ bun setup -DUSE_STATIC_LIBATOMIC=OFF
The built version of Bun may not work on other systems if compiled this way.