static_assets

The static_assets crate contains macros for statically including assets in release mode, but dynamically loading them in debug mode.

This is primarily intended for games, allowing you to both avoid file IO in release builds and dynamically reload assets in debug mode.

Usage

[dependencies]
static_assets = "~0.1.0"

#[macro_use]
extern crate static_assets;

let text = asset_str!("assets/text_asset.txt");
println!("Text is: {}", text);

let bytes = asset_bytes!("assets/binary_asset.bin");
println!("Binary data is: {:?}", bytes);

Internals

The asset_str! and asset_bytes! macros return Cow values - Cow<'static, str> and Cow<'static, [u8]> respectively.

If you're not familiar with the Cow type, what this means is that under the hood, they can be either a reference to some const data (in release mode) or some actual owned data on the heap (in debug mode).

You shouldn't have to care about this though because the above Cow types can deref to &str and &[u8] respectively. Just pass them by reference and treat them as strings/slices.