# Objective
Closes#14474
Previously, the `libm` feature of bevy_math would just pass the same
feature flag down to glam. However, bevy_math itself had many uses of
floating-point arithmetic with unspecified precision. For example,
`f32::sin_cos` and `f32::powi` have unspecified precision, which means
that the exact details of their output are not guaranteed to be stable
across different systems and/or versions of Rust. This means that users
of bevy_math could observe slightly different behavior on different
systems if these methods were used.
The goal of this PR is to make it so that the `libm` feature flag
actually guarantees some degree of determinacy within bevy_math itself
by switching to the libm versions of these functions when the `libm`
feature is enabled.
## Solution
bevy_math now has an internal module `bevy_math::ops`, which re-exports
either the standard versions of the operations or the libm versions
depending on whether the `libm` feature is enabled. For example,
`ops::sin` compiles to `f32::sin` without the `libm` feature and to
`libm::sinf` with it.
This approach has a small shortfall, which is that `f32::powi` (integer
powers of floating point numbers) does not have an equivalent in `libm`.
On the other hand, this method is only used for squaring and cubing
numbers in bevy_math. Accordingly, this deficit is covered by the
introduction of a trait `ops::FloatPow`:
```rust
pub(crate) trait FloatPow {
fn squared(self) -> Self;
fn cubed(self) -> Self;
}
```
Next, each current usage of the unspecified-precision methods has been
replaced by its equivalent in `ops`, so that when `libm` is enabled, the
libm version is used instead. The exception, of course, is that
`.powi(2)`/`.powi(3)` have been replaced with `.squared()`/`.cubed()`.
Finally, the usage of the plain `f32` methods with unspecified precision
is now linted out of bevy_math (and hence disallowed in CI). For
example, using `f32::sin` within bevy_math produces a warning that tells
the user to use the `ops::sin` version instead.
## Testing
Ran existing tests. It would be nice to check some benchmarks on NURBS
things once #14677 merges. I'm happy to wait until then if the rest of
this PR is fine.
---
## Discussion
In the future, it might make sense to actually expose `bevy_math::ops`
as public if any downstream Bevy crates want to provide similar
determinacy guarantees. For now, it's all just `pub(crate)`.
This PR also only covers `f32`. If we find ourselves using `f64`
internally in parts of bevy_math for better robustness, we could extend
the module and lints to cover the `f64` versions easily enough.
I don't know how feasible it is, but it would also be nice if we could
standardize the bevy_math tests with the `libm` feature in CI, since
their success is currently platform-dependent (e.g. 8 of them fail on my
machine when run locally).
---------
Co-authored-by: IQuick 143 <IQuick143cz@gmail.com>
