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How does Bun's bundler compare to esbuild in terms of memory usage


Bun's bundler is designed to be memory-efficient compared to esbuild:

Memory Usage

- Bun's bundler uses memory efficiently. The Zig-based JS/TS parser is optimized for low memory usage[1].
- In a benchmark using Webpack to bundle a large frontend, switching to Bun's bundler reduced memory usage from over 5GB to under 1GB with no performance loss[4].

Lazy Compilation

- Bun supports lazy compilation of entry points and dynamic imports. This means only the code that is needed is compiled, reducing memory usage[4].
- Every page/route is a dynamic import in Bun, so only the routes being worked on are compiled, saving memory[4].

So in summary, Bun's bundler is designed from the ground up to be memory-efficient, with features like lazy compilation that only compile what is needed. This allows it to bundle large projects with much lower memory usage compared to tools like Webpack.

Citations:
[1] https://bun.sh/blog/bun-bundler
[2] https://bun.sh/docs/bundler/vs-esbuild
[3] https://www.builder.io/blog/bun-vs-node-js
[4] https://dev.to/woovi/web-dev-efficiency-achieving-faster-builds-and-lower-memory-load-with-webpack-4cm8
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28860713
[6] https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/discussions/35357
[7] https://elixirforum.com/t/opinions-replace-esbuild-with-bun-js/58271
[8] https://dev.to/thejaredwilcurt/bun-hype-how-we-learned-nothing-from-yarn-2n3j