Bun

Global cache

All packages downloaded from the registry are stored in a global cache at ~/.bun/install/cache. They are stored in subdirectories named like ${name}@${version}, so multiple versions of a package can be cached.

Configuring cache behavior

Minimizing re-downloads

Bun strives to avoid re-downloading packages mutiple 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

Fast copying

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.

Saving disk space

Since Bun uses hardlinks to "copy" a module into a project's node_modules directory on Linux, 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 does not extend to macOS, which uses clonefile for performance reasons.

Installation strategies