Troubleshooting

1) Global installs are not isolated (tools appear after switching versions)

If bun install -g creates or uses ~/.bun, it usually means your shell is not picking up BVM shims first.

Fix

1. Run:

bvm setup

2. Restart your terminal (or reload your shell config).

3. Verify:

which bun

Expected: it should point to ~/.bvm/shims/bun (macOS/Linux).

2) On Windows, which is not available

Use PowerShell built-ins:

Get-Command bun
Get-Command cowsay
where.exe bun
where.exe cowsay

Expected: where.exe bun should list ...\.bvm\shims\bun.cmd before ...\.bvm\current\bin\bun.exe.

3) I installed a global tool but it is not found

BVM isolates global tools per Bun version. After switching versions, a global tool may be missing by design.

What to do

• Reinstall it under the active version:

bun install -g <pkg>

• If your shell caches commands, refresh it:
  • macOS/Linux: open a new terminal, or run hash -r
  • Windows PowerShell: open a new PowerShell

If needed, you can manually regenerate shims:

bvm rehash

4) PowerShell script execution is blocked

If install.ps1 fails due to policy restrictions, run this in PowerShell:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Then retry the installer.

5) Bun metadata or runtime downloads fail

Show the cached registry order, then run a fresh test:

bvm network
bvm network test

BVM automatic mode can use npmmirror, Tencent Cloud's npm mirror, and npmjs. If your organization requires one source, make it explicit:

BVM_REGISTRY=https://your-registry.example bvm install <version>

Explicit mode is authoritative and does not silently use public fallbacks. BVM still requires SHA-512 integrity metadata before installing a downloaded runtime.