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Book

Why this book?

This book started from the question: 'Is Bevy suitable for Test-Driven Development?', as the author was looking for a Rust gaming library suitable for Test-Driven Development.

At the time of writing, there is only one blog post on Test-Driven Development with Bevy, which only has two tests. And that test suite has not been built up from scratch.

This book tries to start from scratch and build up gradually, always aiming for 100% code coverage.

When all facets of a game can be tested with 100% code coverage, the question 'Is Bevy suitable for Test-Driven Development?' can be answered with a 'yes'.

What is the intended audience of this book?

Intermediate Rust developers: people that have read parts of 'The Rust programming language' [Klabnik & Nichols, 2018]``[Klabnik & Nichols, 2023].

This book does not teach Rust, nor Bevy. Instead, it shows Test-Driven Development in Rust with Bevy.

What is the goal of this book?

The goal is to demonstrate how to do Test-Driven Development in Rust with Bevy.

Each chapter introduces as much new concepts as needs, which is as few as possible. Due to this, the first chapters do not result in a playable game yet.

What are the subgoals of this book?

  • Code is tested to work; it can be detected when the code is not working anymore.
  • Always achieve 100% code coverage when ignoring the main function in src/main.rs
  • Follow the Rust idiom as suggested by the clippy Rust package
  • Get the test to work as simply as possible
    • No marker Components when tests pass without using these
  • The first chapters must be simple enough to reasonably be put in one single file
  • Only call Bevy with use bevy::prelude::*;, use full names beyond that (e.g. bevy::input::InputPlugin) over adding more uses
  • Have a running program in each chapter

What are the non-goals of this book?

  • Having an interesting game in the end
  • Always have the fastest solution
  • Explain Rust
  • Explain Bevy deeper than the examples require. For example, in chapter add_player a simple definition of an Entity is given: 'an instance of Component'. This definition purposefully ignores that an Entity also has a unique identifier, as it is not help to better understand the code of that chapter
  • Support code of older Bevy version
  • Give tips that are of personal preference, unless described as such
  • Use fancy idioms that are of personal preference, unless described as such

Are there other sources you recommend?

General

Why use Test-Driven Development?

TDD is known to improve code quality [Alkaoud & Walcott, 2018][Janzen & Saiedian, 2006].

Why is 100% code coverage important?

Code coverage correlates with code quality [Horgan et al., 1994] [Del Frate et al., 1995]. Due to this, having a code coverage of (around) 100% is mandatory to pass a code peer-review by committees such as, for example, rOpenSci [Ram, 2013].

Why is Continuous Integration testing important?

Software inherently degrades (for example, due to changes in the Bevy library) and we should take that as a given [Beck, 2000]. Continuous Integration is known to significantly increase the number of bugs exposed and increases the speed at which new features are added [Vasilescu et al., 2015].

In the context of this book, a bug can be:

  • the code shown in the chapters does not match the tested code of the repository these are copy-pasted from anymore
  • spelling errors
  • markdown style errors
  • broken links

Why is using a Rust linter important?

Following a consistent coding style improves software quality [Fang, 2001].

Technical

How is code tested to work?

The CI script 'Check chapters' checks if each line in the chapters can be found in the complete projects there were copy-pasted from. In that way, if code changes in the projects, the chapters must be updated for the CI scripts to pass.

Why ignore the main function in src/main.rs for code coverage?

Because one cannot test the main function.

The main is where a game is started. When the game is started, one needs user input to close the game. TDD needs tests that do not require user input.

Why don't you use dynamic linking?

The Bevy setup recommends to use dynamic linking, as this results in faster build times.

However, when using dynamic linking, I was unable to use the debugger in neither Visual Studio Code, nor RustRover.

As I prefer using a debugger over fast build times, I choose to not use dynamic linking and -indeed- wait a bit longer for a build to finish.

If you want to use dynamic linking, to a Cargo.toml file, change:

[dependencies]
bevy = { version = "0.14.0" }

to

[dependencies]
bevy = { version = "0.14.0", features = ["dynamic_linking"] }

About the author

Which Rust IDE do you like best?

These are the IDEs I tried:

  • RustRover
  • Visual Studio Code

My favorite is RustRover. RustRover is specialized in Rust development, where Visual Studio Code is a general-purpose IDE, and this is noticeable to me:

  • RustRover works better out-of-of-the-box under my operating system (Linux, with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
  • RustRover does not take all CPUs when building, so I can work on lightweight other things too
  • RustRover has the keyboard shortcuts setup for the things I need, with combinations that feel natural to me

My open questions

Use setup_ or add_ for functions that add components in the Setup phase?

The Bevy example often start functions that add Components at the App at startup with setup, e.g. setup_camera. As the functions add things, I use the verb add instead, e.g. add_camera. Should I follow the -IMHO- better English description of what the function does (i.e. use add), or should I follow the Bevy social convention to use setup?

Is there a way to do a Query on a immutable World?

This is a test I would like to be able to write:

fn test_empty_app_has_no_players() {
    let app = App::new();
    assert_eq!(count_n_players(&app), 0);
}

The idea of count_n_players is to count the number of times a (marker) component is present. Because we only read (i.e. do not modify the App), we can write let app (instead of let mut app).

Writing this test, however, fails when implementing count_n_players.

Below is an implementation that I wish I could write, that uses a query on an immutable World:

// Does not compile, as `query` expects a mutable World
fn count_n_players(app: &App) -> usize {
    let query = app.world().query::<&Player>();
    return query.iter(app.world()).len();
}

However, a query always needs a mutable World, hence an implementation that works is:

// Does not modify the App, I promise!
fn count_n_players(app: &mut App) -> usize {
    let mut query = app.world_mut().query::<&Player>();
    return query.iter(app.world()).len();
}

I added a comment to illustrate that one needs to promise not to change an object, instead of enforcing it (i.e. not using mut).

With an implementation that uses &mut App, the test needs to be changed to:

fn test_empty_app_has_no_players() {
    let mut app = App::new();
    // Does not modify the App, I promise!
    assert_eq!(count_n_players(&mut app), 0);
}

Also here I added a comment to illustrate that one needs to promise not to change an object, instead of enforcing it (i.e. not using mut).

I assume that also in Bevy I express my promises in Rust, so how do I query something on an immutable App?

References

  • [Alkaoud & Walcott, 2018] Alkaoud, Hessah, and Kristen R. Walcott. "Quality metrics of test suites in test-driven designed applications." International Journal of Software Engineering Applications (IJSEA) 2018 (2018).
  • [Beck, 2000] Beck, Kent. Extreme programming explained: embrace change. addison-wesley professional, 2000.
  • [Del Frate et al., 1995] Del Frate, Fabio, et al. "On the correlation between code coverage and software reliability." Proceedings of Sixth International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering. ISSRE'95. IEEE, 1995.
  • [Fang, 2001] Fang, Xuefen. "Using a coding standard to improve program quality." Proceedings Second Asia-Pacific Conference on Quality Software. IEEE, 2001.
  • [Horgan et al., 1994] Horgan, Joseph R., Saul London, and Michael R. Lyu. "Achieving software quality with testing coverage measures." Computer 27.9 (1994): 60-69.
  • [Janzen & Saiedian, 2006] Janzen, David S., and Hossein Saiedian. "Test-driven learning: intrinsic integration of testing into the CS/SE curriculum." Acm Sigcse Bulletin 38.1 (2006): 254-258.
  • [Klabnik & Nichols, 2018] Klabnik, Steve, and Carol Nichols. The Rust programming language. No Starch Press, 2023.
  • [Klabnik & Nichols, 2023] Klabnik, Steve, and Carol Nichols. The Rust programming language. No Starch Press, 2023.
  • [Ram, 2013] Ram, K. "rOpenSci-open tools for open science." AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. Vol. 2013. 2013.
  • [Vasilescu et al., 2015] Vasilescu, Bogdan, et al. "Quality and productivity outcomes relating to continuous integration in GitHub." Proceedings of the 2015 10th joint meeting on foundations of software engineering. 2015.