All packages downloaded from the registry are stored in a global cache at ~/.bun/install/cache, or the path defined by the environment variable BUN_INSTALL_CACHE_DIR. They are stored in subdirectories named like ${name}@${version}, so multiple versions of a package can be cached.
Configuring cache behavior (bunfig.toml)
[install.cache]# the directory to use for the cachedir="~/.bun/install/cache"# when true, don't load from the global cache.# Bun may still write to node_modules/.cachedisable=false# when true, always resolve the latest versions from the registrydisableManifest=false
Bun strives to avoid re-downloading packages multiple times. When installing a package, if the cache already contains a version in the range specified by package.json, Bun will use the cached package instead of downloading it again.
Installation details
If the semver version has pre-release suffix (1.0.0-beta.0) or a build suffix (1.0.0+20220101), it is replaced with a hash of that value instead, to reduce the chances of errors associated with long file paths.
When the node_modules folder exists, before installing, Bun checks that node_modules contains all expected packages with appropriate versions. If so bun install completes. Bun uses a custom JSON parser which stops parsing as soon as it finds "name" and "version".
If a package is missing or has a version incompatible with the package.json, Bun checks for a compatible module in the cache. If found, it is installed into node_modules. Otherwise, the package will be downloaded from the registry then installed.
Once a package is downloaded into the cache, Bun still needs to copy those files into node_modules. Bun uses the fastest syscalls available to perform this task. On Linux, it uses hardlinks; on macOS, it uses clonefile.
Since Bun uses hardlinks to "copy" a module into a project's node_modules directory on Linux and Windows, the contents of the package only exist in a single location on disk, greatly reducing the amount of disk space dedicated to node_modules.
This benefit also applies to macOS, but there are exceptions. It uses clonefile which is copy-on-write, meaning it will not occupy disk space, but it will count towards drive's limit. This behavior is useful if something attempts to patch node_modules/*, so it's impossible to affect other installations.
Installation strategies
This behavior is configurable with the --backend flag, which is respected by all of Bun's package management commands.
hardlink: Default on Linux and Windows.
clonefile Default on macOS.
clonefile_each_dir: Similar to clonefile, except it clones each file individually per directory. It is only available on macOS and tends to perform slower than clonefile.
copyfile: The fallback used when any of the above fail. It is the slowest option. On macOS, it uses fcopyfile(); on Linux it uses copy_file_range().
symlink: Currently used only file: (and eventually link:) dependencies. To prevent infinite loops, it skips symlinking the node_modules folder.
If you install with --backend=symlink, Node.js won't resolve node_modules of dependencies unless each dependency has its own node_modules folder or you pass --preserve-symlinks to node. See Node.js documentation on --preserve-symlinks.
bun install --backend symlink
node --preserve-symlinks ./foo.js
Bun's runtime does not currently expose an equivalent of --preserve-symlinks.
