Something that's always been true about software is that every project has different needs.

A lot of debate about how we should be engineering suffers from the fundamentally flawed idea that we can write one set of rules and practices that perfectly apply to all software projects:

"If you don't have strong test coverage, your project will suffer" vs.
"Tests are a waste of time and have only caused my teams more pain"

Lately: "If you don't review your agent's code yourself, your your project will rot" vs.
"Agents are so good at writing and reviewing code now, you shouldn't waste time on it"

The quality of agent-generated code has risen and likely will continue to rise, which is not a surprise. With this, the review debate is getting louder and more contentious.

To me, this is still a question of code criticality, and the idea that the importance of quality code review depends on the project isn't really a new one, so once again, we just have an old problem in a new form.

I'm the developer of bun-workspaces, a package for monorepo tooling that works with Bun's workspaces.

In deciding to support npm and pnpm as package managers as well, bun-workspaces's name became obviously inappropriate if I were to continue development.

With that, I'm introducing pacwich! This is the official continuation of bun-workspaces with multi-package-manager support.

pacwich is built from bun-workspaces's core and is mostly backwards compatible. If you're an existing user, you can use the official migration guide and explore the docs, which have enhanced LLM integrations as well.

Read on to learn more about my motivations and strategy for the pivot.

# Global install with your preferred package manager
# The pacwich command will use a local install if available
bun add -g pacwich
pnpm add -g pacwich
npm install -g pacwich

# Local install in your project
bun add -d pacwich
pnpm add -D pacwich
npm install -D pacwich

⚠️ UPDATE: bun-workspaces is now developed as pacwich, which supports Bun, npm, and pnpm workspaces.

bun-workspaces 1.9 is a major milestone for the project, thanks to the new debuggable affected graph!

Read on for more details, or get straight into the documentation.

More documentation resources:

• Affected Overview
• CLI:
  • bw list-affected
  • bw run-affected
• TS/JS API:
  • FileSystemProject.determineAffectedWorkspaces()
  • FileSystemProject.runAffectedWorkspaceScript()
• Configuration
  • Project Root Configuration (sets default base git ref for comparison)
  • Workspace Configuration (sets inputs for affected detection)
  • Workspace Inputs (configuring affected detection inputs)
• Workspace Dependencies (how workspaces depend on each other)

⚠️ UPDATE: bun-workspaces is now developed as pacwich, which supports Bun, npm, and pnpm workspaces.

bun-workspaces 1.5 is here! Let's cover some noteworthy feature additions since version 1's release.

Jump to: TypeScript Configs | Workspace Tags | Dependency Rules | MCP Server

1956: An MIT laboratory develops a new version of the Whirlwind I for the U.S. Navy, the first computer with a built-in typewriter keyboard for direct input operation, the Friden Flexowriter, making punch card procedures obsolete.

1978: The VT100 is released, the first terminal with a video display to support the ANSI codes used today. There are control codes for the keyboard's lights, reminding me of the the RGBs on my mechanical keyboard that have been a great way to impress women.

1989: The bash terminal shell is released under one of the first open source licenses, combining many of the best features of existing shells that could control the Unix operating system. Two years later, Linus Torvalds ports it to Linux.

2005: Linus Torvalds releases git, an improved system of version control and collaboration for developing a directory of files, though Linus's first commit to its own source code calls it "the information manager from hell."

2011: The idea of a "coding bootcamp" is first seen. The current barrier of entry for code self-education is lower than most people realize. Years later, I eventually attend one of these bootcamps, where I am first taught to use bash and git in macOS's terminal emulator.

2025: Claude Code is released, including the fully terminal-based AI coding interface used popularly by developers of all experience levels. A year later, I attend a vibe coding hype presentation of Claude targeting a non-technical audience that inevitably ends up emphasizing having some familiarity with bash and git.

⚠️ UPDATE: bun-workspaces is now developed as pacwich, which supports Bun, npm, and pnpm workspaces.

bun-workspaces was in alpha for several months, and now version 1 is here! The package is officially at 1.1.2 at the time of writing.

Along with this first stable version is the first blog post! Let's take a walk through some of the core features of bun-workspaces, both its CLI and its TypeScript API.