Explainer: "Try bun without installing it"

[mfts]

Let's break down what happens in this tweet 👇

The one-liner script

This following script from the tweet above uses bun to create a Next.js create-next-app app called "app-tea" via tea

sh <(curl tea.xyz) +bun.sh bun create next ./app-tea

Breakdown

Let's break it down.

sh <(curl tea.xyz) +bun.sh bun create next ./app-tea
#-----------------
#        |
#  tea one-liner

1. if tea is installed, our one-liner uses the tea installation,
2. if it’s not installed then it doesn’t install tea or any dependencies, it creates a sandbox and runs everything in there

I had tea installed, so case 1 applies. If you are running it the script and do not have tea installed, case 2 applies.
In case 2, tea and the package you add are stored in a tmp folder (/var/folders/... on macOS).

It's important to note that without any package, the command will install tea locally (see more here)

Moving on to the package declaration

sh <(curl tea.xyz) +bun.sh bun create next ./app-tea
#                  -------
#                     |
#             package declaration

We explicitly declare bun with the syntax + and the package's FQDN as unique identifier. bun is injected into our current environment. So that whatever command comes next has access to the bun package. There are also other ways to inject a package into the current environment; learn more here.

Side-note: Discover all tea packages

1. You can find all packages in pantry.core and pantry.extra, or
2. On our website https://tea.xyz/+/, or
3. If you have tea installed, open ~/.tea/tea.xyz/var/pantry/projects

Finally, the package command

sh <(curl tea.xyz) +bun.sh bun create next ./app-tea
#                          -------------------------
#                                  |
#                            package command

This is straightforward. This is the command you would normally use if you had the package, i.e. bun, installed on your system. The command was taken from the bun README here.

Done

And that's it. You have successfully used bun to create a Next.js app without actually installing bun.