Create react-app using --bun is broken

[iot-imahmood]

What version of Bun is running?

1.2.0

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 24.3.0 arm64 arm

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Install bun globally
2. Run: bun --bun create react-app my-react-app on terminal
3. Errors and doesn't create anything inside the directory (my-react-app) except package-lock.json

What is the expected behavior?

• Should work, without errors
• Should generate all the necessary files
• Should install all dependencies with its latest stable versions (e.g. react 19) using bun

What do you see instead?

Currently outputs:

Creating a new React app in <pwd>/react-app-19-bun-cli.

Installing packages. This might take a couple of minutes.
Installing react, react-dom, and react-scripts with cra-template...

⠏
added 1326 packages in 19s

268 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details
1 | 
2 |         const init = require('react-scripts/scripts/init.js');
3 |         init.apply(null, JSON.parse(process.argv[1]));
                                  ^
SyntaxError: JSON Parse error: Unrecognized token '/'
      at <pwd>/react-app-19-bun-cli/[eval]:3:31

Bun v1.2.0 (macOS arm64)

Aborting installation.
  node  has failed.

Deleting generated file... node_modules
Deleting generated file... package.json
Done.

Additional information

Currently next-app is working fine with bun. Below is an output from my machine.

❯ bun --bun create next-app next-app-bun-app-with-bun-cli 
✔ Would you like to use TypeScript? … No / Yes
✔ Would you like to use ESLint? … No / Yes
✔ Would you like to use Tailwind CSS? … No / Yes
✔ Would you like your code inside a `src/` directory? … No / Yes
✔ Would you like to use App Router? (recommended) … No / Yes
✔ Would you like to use Turbopack for `next dev`? … No / Yes
✔ Would you like to customize the import alias (`@/*` by default)? … No / Yes
Creating a new Next.js app in <pwd>/next-app-bun-app-with-bun-cli.

Using bun.

Initializing project with template: app-tw 


Installing dependencies:
- react
- react-dom
- next

Installing devDependencies:
- typescript
- @types/node
- @types/react
- @types/react-dom
- postcss
- tailwindcss
- eslint
- eslint-config-next
- @eslint/eslintrc

bun install v1.2.0 (b0c5a765)

+ @eslint/eslintrc@3.2.0
+ @types/node@20.17.17 (v22.13.1 available)
+ @types/react@19.0.8
+ @types/react-dom@19.0.3
+ eslint@9.20.0
+ eslint-config-next@15.1.6
+ postcss@8.5.1
+ tailwindcss@3.4.17 (v4.0.6 available)
+ typescript@5.7.3
+ next@15.1.6
+ react@19.0.0
+ react-dom@19.0.0

360 packages installed [2.52s]
Initialized a git repository.

Success! Created next-app-bun-app-with-bun-cli at <pwd>/next-app-bun-app-with-bun-cli

[reillyjodonnell]

darwin 24.2 arm64 w/ bun 1.2.2

reilly@mac trash % bun --bun create react-app my-react-app

Creating a new React app in /Users/reilly/programming/forks/bun/trash/my-react-app.

Installing packages. This might take a couple of minutes.
Installing react, react-dom, and react-scripts with cra-template...


added 1326 packages in 20s

268 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details
1 | 
2 |         const init = require('react-scripts/scripts/init.js');
3 |         init.apply(null, JSON.parse(process.argv[1]));
                                  ^
SyntaxError: JSON Parse error: Unrecognized token '/'
      at /Users/reilly/programming/forks/bun/trash/my-react-app/[eval]:3:31

[RiskyMH]

the root cause of this issue is #12209 because its overwriting the first argument with the "path", the node exec (bun in this case) now doesn't have the ability to read it.

https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/blob/b532a58792ea79ba7b0e85c1cb42b2a36dafe276/packages/create-react-app/createReactApp.js#L524

# node  -p "process.argv" a
[ '/root/.nvm/versions/node/v23.6.1/bin/node', 'a' ]

# bun  -p "process.argv" a
[ "/root/.bun/bin/bun", "/root/[eval]" ]

---

also in current state create-react-app isn't working as its calling npm to install and there are lots of react@19 peer deps errors.