Issue 10685

[ZackaryRippee]

Objective

• Fixes get_path_ref method for AssetServer #10685
• When working with a large number of asset handles, extracting paths using AssetServer::get_path requires cloning the AssetPath for each handle, which can be inefficient
• Users need a way to access asset paths by reference to avoid unnecessary cloning when iterating over many handles

Solution

• Added AssetServer::get_path_ref() method that returns a reference to the asset path without cloning
• Implemented AssetPathRef struct that holds a read lock guard and dereferences to AssetPath<'static>
• Added internal AssetInfos::get_path_ref() helper method to retrieve path references from asset indices
• The returned AssetPathRef implements Deref<Target = AssetPath<'static>>, allowing transparent access to the path while keeping the lock alive

Testing

• The code compiles successfully with cargo check --package bevy_asset
• The implementation follows the same pattern as existing AssetServer methods that use read locks
• Manual testing can be done by:
  1. Loading multiple assets with AssetServer::load()
  2. Calling get_path_ref() on asset IDs/handles
  3. Verifying the returned path matches the loaded asset path
  4. Confirming no unnecessary cloning occurs during iteration

Reviewers can test by:

let asset_server = world.resource::<AssetServer>();
let handle: Handle<Image> = asset_server.load("texture.png");
if let Some(path_ref) = asset_server.get_path_ref(handle.id()) {
    println!("Asset path: {}", path_ref.path().display());
}

[andriyDev]

@ZackaryRippee Is this really a problem? AssetPath internally contains 3 CowArc's. So when you clone an AssetPath<'static>, you're really just cloning 3 Arcs (since the AssetServer already stores AssetPath<'static>). Doing double the lookups is much more likely to be a perf problem than the clone IMO.

Slightly related: I would absolutely be in favor of making AssetServer::get_path return AssetPath<'static>, since that is what we return, but it gets coerced into AssetPath<'self> instead, requiring an additional clone just to get it static again. Not a big deal, but seems like an obvious improvement.