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Third Party Plugin Guidelines

Bevy has a plug and play architecture, where you can easily add plugins for new features, or replace built-in plugins with your own.

This document targets plugin authors.

Checklist

Naming

You are free to use a bevy_xxx name for your plugin, but please be reasonable. If you are about to claim a generic name like bevy_animation, bevy_color, or bevy_editor, please ask first. The rationale is explained here.

Main Branch Tracking

Bevy is evolving very fast. Regularly new features are working on the main branch, but are not yet released. Your plugin might depend on Bevy main or the latest release. You can also do both on different branches (e.g. have a bevy_main branch).

If you intend to track Bevy's main branch, you can specify the latest commit you support in your Cargo.toml file:

bevy = { version = "0.5", git = "https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy", rev="9788b386c7846c99978ab5c1a33698ec5a471d84", default-features = false }

You can specify the dependency both as a version and with git. The version will be used if the dependency is pulled from crates.io. Otherwise, the git dependency will be used.

You can use one of these badges to communicate to your users how closely you intend to track Bevy's main branch.

badge
description
 code
Bevy tracking I intend to track main as much as I can [![Bevy tracking](https://img.shields.io/badge/Bevy%20tracking-main-lightblue)](https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/blob/main/docs/plugins_guidelines.md#main-branch-tracking)
Bevy tracking I will only follow released Bevy versions [![Bevy tracking](https://img.shields.io/badge/Bevy%20tracking-released%20version-lightblue)](https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/blob/main/docs/plugins_guidelines.md#main-branch-tracking)

Licensing

Bevy is dual licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0, at your option. Most other Rust projects (including Rust itself) also use this dual-license approach. MIT-only is very popular and you might be tempted to just use that (Bevy also used to be MIT-only), but there are very good reasons to include both licenses. We highly recommend using the dual MIT / Apache-2.0 license for your Bevy Plugins and crates:

  • Including the Apache 2.0 license option significantly reduces the difficulty and boilerplate of proper license compliance in published games because you only need to include one copy of the Apache 2.0 license.
  • Provides maximum compatibility with Bevy and Rust, making it easier to upstream your changes.

Small Crate Size

To avoid long build times in your plugin and in projects using it, you should aim for a small crate size:

  • Disable Bevy features that you don't use

    • Features are additive => Bevy features enabled in your plugin cannot be disabled by someone using your plugin

    • You can find Bevy's features here.

      bevy = { version = "0.5", default-features = false, features = ["..."] }

  • Avoid large dependencies

  • Put optional functionality and dependencies behind a feature

Documentation and Examples

Documentation and examples are very useful for a crate.

In the case of a Bevy plugin, a few screenshots or movies/animated GIFs from your examples can really help to understand what your plugin is capable of.

Additionally, it can be helpful to list:

  • Stages added by the plugin
  • Systems used
  • Components available from your plugin

Indicate Compatible Versions

Indicating which version of your plugin works with which version of Bevy can be helpful for your users. Some of your users may be using an older version of Bevy for any number of reasons. You can help them find which version of your plugin they should use. This can be shown as a simple table in your readme with each version of Bevy and the corresponding compatible version of your plugin.

bevy bevy_awesome_plugin
0.5 0.3
0.4 0.1

Tests and CI

Tests are always good! For CI, you can check this example for a quickstart using GitHub Actions. As Bevy has additional Linux dependencies, you should install them before building your project (here is how Bevy is doing it). Even if you don't have many (or any) tests, setting up CI will compile check your plugin and ensure a basic level of quality.

Publishing your Plugin

There are some extra fields that you can add to your Cargo.toml manifest, in the [package] section:

field description
description a description of the plugin
repository URL of the plugin source repository
license the plugin license
keywords keywords for the plugin - "bevy" at least is a good idea here
categories categories of the plugin - see the full list on crates.io
exclude files to exclude from the released package - excluding the assets folder that you may have is a good idea, as well as any large file that are not needed by the plugin

Once a crate is published to crates.io, there are two badges that you can add to your README.md for easy links:

badge code
crates.io [![crates.io](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/bevy_awesome_plugin)](https://crates.io/crates/bevy_awesome_plugin)
docs.rs [![docs.rs](https://docs.rs/bevy_awesome_plugin/badge.svg)](https://docs.rs/bevy_awesome_plugin)

Promotion

You can promote your plugin in Bevy's communities: