I’ve been working with npm for years now and built tons of projects with it. Recently I heard about this new package manager called Bun and I’m curious about it. Has anyone here actually tried it in real projects? I’m wondering if it’s worth switching from npm. My main concerns are whether Bun works with all the Node.js packages I’m already using, if the performance boost is actually noticeable in day-to-day development, and how complicated it would be to convert my existing projects. Would love to hear from anyone who has hands-on experience with both tools.
Made the switch 6 months ago for a production app - it’s been a mixed bag. Installation speed is crazy fast though - went from 2-3 minutes with npm to under 30 seconds. But I’ve hit some compatibility headaches with dev tools and CI/CD that needed workarounds. Workspace support isn’t as polished as npm’s yet. I’d say start with new projects instead of converting existing ones right away. The ecosystem’s moving fast, but npm still feels more solid for critical production stuff. The speed boost is legit though, especially on bigger codebases.
Been using Bun with npm for 4 months now - the transition’s messier than you’d expect. Performance is definitely better, especially TypeScript compilation, but there are some annoying gotchas. Biggest problem? Certain native modules just won’t work with Bun’s runtime. I’m constantly falling back to Node for debugging. The bundler’s solid though, and it’s been rock-solid for frontend stuff. I keep npm for existing projects and use Bun for new experimental things. Not a crazy learning curve, but you’ll waste time fixing edge cases that npm just handles. If npm isn’t giving you problems right now, probably not worth the headache yet.
bun is pretty cool, but don’t jump ship just yet. i’ve played around with it for smaller stuff, and yeah, it’s faster, especially when installing. most npm packages work without issues, but there might be some weird cases. maybe test it out on a new project first!