Add a straightforward API for simple system ordering

[alice-i-cecile]

What problem does this solve or what need does it fill?

Creating simple orderings between systems is harder than it should be. Users must define a label, and then use a .before or .after method.

In many cases, we have two (or maybe a few more) systems that need to be linearly ordered, which are defined in the same plugin.

This is both verbose and harder to read / reason about

What solution would you like?

app.add_system_set(system_a.then(system_b))

The .then method on IntoSystemDescriptor converts a system function into a SystemSet.

What alternative(s) have you considered?

System set chaining

app.add_system_set(systems![
  my_system,
  my_other_system
].chain())

Adapted from https://github.com/bevyengine/rfcs/pull/45/files#diff-d319c5378a207f7eae8b553b1df6b026d7bfc885b016f776a64b48ed86935d5fR769

System graph

We could use a full system graph API, as defined in #2381 (and the bevy_system_graph crate that came out of this).

This is probably too complex and unwieldy for this very simple but common case, but may be desirable later regardless.

add_system .then

Naively, a mechanism that works like the current .chain seems desirable.

app.add_system(system_a.then(my_other_system))

Unfortunately, this won't work under the hood: add_system expects a single system.

Additional context

Related to #4219, which proposes additional ergonomics improvements.

We may want to rename add_system_set to add_systems, following the suggestions in the Stageless RFC, to improve ergonomics. This should probably be done in a follow-up PR to improve reviewability.

I also really really want label-less ordering apis
Something like system_a.after(system_b)
would cover like 95% of system ordering use cases

• Cart on Discord

[MrGVSV]

Should/could this work within a SystemSet itself?

For example:

app.add_system_set(SystemSet::on_update(MyState::InGame).with_system(system_a.then(system_b));

[alice-i-cecile]

Should/could this work within a SystemSet itself?

I don't think this is a super important use case, but I think that it'll just happen automatically. If my intuition is right, I think it's fine to allow it to continue to work, rather than to try to explicitly forbid it.

[james7132]

We could use a full system graph API, as defined in #2381 (and the bevy_system_graph crate that came out of this).
This is probably too complex and unwieldy for this very simple but common case, but may be desirable later regardless.

One idea that came out of the Discord discussion that spawned this is a IntoSystemGraph coercion trait implemented on FunctionSystem or something similar that supports then and fork APIs proposed. There would need to be a similar coercion for getting it to insert the entire graph in at once too.

[alice-i-cecile]

Took a crack at the .then API. It's not going to be pretty, because of the strange architecture of all of our scheduling traits. If you want to take a look / build off it, feel free to steal from https://github.com/alice-i-cecile/bevy/tree/then-finally.

I don't think it's very feasible until #4391 (or equivalent cleanup) occurs.