bun.sh/docs/project/contributing.md

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, you must use a WSL environment as Bun does not yet compile on Windows natively.

Install Dependencies

Using your system's package manager, install the Bun's dependencies:

{% codetabs %}

$ brew install automake ccache cmake coreutils gnu-sed go libiconv libtool ninja pkg-config rust

$ sudo apt install 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 libatomic-static libstdc++-static sed unzip which libicu-devel

{% /codetabs %}

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 # for macOS, Linux, and WSL

$ npm install -g bun # the last `npm` command you'll ever need

$ brew tap oven-sh/bun # for macOS and Linux
$ brew install bun

$ docker pull oven/bun
$ docker run --rm --init --ulimit memlock=-1:-1 oven/bun

$ proto install bun

{% /codetabs %}

Install LLVM

Bun requires LLVM 16 and Clang 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

{% /codetabs %}

If none of the above solutions apply, you will have to install it manually.

Make sure LLVM 16 is in your path:

$ which clang-16

If not, run this to manually link it:

{% codetabs %}

# use fish_add_path if you're using fish
$ 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 %}

Building Bun

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 . -G Ninja -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
$ ninja -C build # 'bun run build' runs just this

Advanced uses can pass CMake flags to customize the build.

VSCode

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.

Code generation scripts

{% 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.

Modifying ESM modules

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.

Release build

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.

Valgrind

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>

Building WebKit locally + Debug mode of JSC

{% 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.

Troubleshooting

'span' file not found on Ubuntu

⚠️ 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>
         ^~~~~~

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

libarchive

If you see an error when compiling libarchive, run this:

$ brew install pkg-config

macOS library not found for -lSystem

If you see this error when compiling, run:

$ xcode-select --install

Arch Linux / Cannot find libatomic.a

Bun requires libatomic to be statically linked. On Arch Linux, it is only given as a shared library, but as a workaround you can symlink it to get the build working locally.

$ sudo ln -s /lib/libatomic.so /lib/libatomic.a

The built version of Bun may not work on other systems if compiled this way.