Bun is an all-in-one toolset for JavaScript and TypeScript applications. Shipped as a single executable
If you are looking for a platform that allows you to run applications written in JavaScript, JSX and TypeScript In resource-limited environments, Bun can be a great solution for you.
Bun is positioned as a platform designed for independent execution of JavaScript and TypeScript applications and that can be used as a transparent replacement for the Node.js platform.
About Bun
Bun is a project that is being developed with a view to ensuring compatibility with the server applications written for Node.js, supporting most of the Node.js API, including modules and frameworks.
Compared to Node.js and Deno, which use the V8 JavaScript engine, Bun is based on the JavaScriptCore framework developed by Apple for the Safari browser. In addition to high performance, the use of JavaScriptCore also reduced memory consumption.
As well traditional web APIs are supported, including objects, in addition to providing support for both Node.js modules and JavaScript modules (ESM), built according to the ECMAScript 6 specification and used in browser-based web applications. As it stands, most npm packages built for Node.js can be run in Bun with little to no modification.
Bun is a direct replacement for Node.js. That means existing Node.js apps and npm packages simply work in Bun
The platform can also replace many related tools that are being developed for the Node.js ecosystem.
Good includes a complete set of tools for creating and running applications in JavaScript and TypeScript. Among other things, the platform provides a runtime for creating server-side drivers and running JavaScript applications without a browser, an NPM-compatible package manager, a set of tools for running tests, a system for creating self-contained packages, and a bunx utility to install and run packages from the NPM repository (equivalent to npx and Yarn dlx).
Stated goals include being able to run most existing server-side JavaScript applications, achieving high performance, and providing tools to reduce development complexity and increase productivity.
It is also highlighted that Bun provides a minimal set of optimized APIs to perform tasks efficiently, such as running an HTTP server and working with files. The “bun –hot” mode supports automatic reloading of hot code in case of changes to application files, made without stopping the program (during a reboot, established connections will not be interrupted and state will not be lost ).
Bun's specialty is his performance which boasts of being much larger than Deno and Node.js. For example, in tests running a server application based on the React framework, the use of Bun demonstrates twice the performance of the Deno platform and 4,7 times more than Node.js. In a test of a chat server using WebSocket, Bun outperforms Deno 2 times and Node.js 6 times. In the test of loading large tables from SQLite, the Bun platform is twice as fast as Deno and Node.js is 4 times faster.
How to get Bun?
For those interested in being able to install Bun, just open a terminal and type the following command:
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
As for the way you can install applications, you can do it using the command
bun install
And to compile, just run the command
bun build
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Bun, supports the mechanisms used in Node.js to work with modules and handle dependencies. The project code is written in Zig and C++ and is distributed under the MIT license. To execute JavaScript, the JavaScriptCore JavaScript engine and components from the WebKit project with additional patches are used.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link