Runtime API for bun install?

[lewisl9029]

Hi there! I have a use case for installing sets of npm packages into arbitrary temp directories (sometimes concurrently) at runtime. I'm currently using the arborist library inside NPM for this.

I'm looking into switching to bun install for the performance and storage efficiency, but ideally I'd want to just call a runtime API within Bun (say Bun.install(cwd)?) instead of spawning a Bun process for each install, which feels like it could be a bit wasteful in terms of memory, network connections, etc. It'd be even better if Bun.install() could return some metadata about the installed dependency graph like arborist does, but I can live without this for now.

Do you think the current implementation of bun install can be safely run concurrently like this from within the same process? Or would I be better off just spawning a separate process for each to be safe?

If this sounds feasible and is something you're open to accepting, I'd be happy to work on a PR! Thanks!