allow building without a bootstrap

[selfisekai]

What is the problem this feature would solve?

requiring a previous build of bun renders building bun greatly difficult. this is especially true for any platforms that are not all of: Linux/macOS (e.g. BSD), x86_64/aarch64 (e.g. riscv64), gnu libc (e.g. musl).

distributions typically also have policies against repackaging binaries. an example one from Fedora: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/what-can-be-packaged/#prebuilt-binaries-or-libraries

I don't think bun has many reasons to be this much more complicated.

TL;DR simplifying building from source, and by that distribution packaging of bun, availability of bun to users.

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

do not require a previous version of bun to build bun.

• allow building typescript scripts with standalone tsc, esbuild, or swc
• allow running build-time ts/js scripts with node.js or deno.
  • do not use bun-specific apis. bun already keeps compatibility with node.js built-in modules.
  • expose that as an option in cmake.
• allow fetching npm dependencies with npm, yarn, or pnpm.
  • release a lockfile in a format compatible with any of these together with new versions of bun.

(willing to contribute to this)

What alternatives have you considered?

not packaging bun, rethinking life choices.