Thanks for the PR!

A common use case is ui.label(format!("answer: {}", 42)); which will pass in a String. With this PR, the string will need an additional clone (since to_string takes a &self).

The ergonomic win may outweigh this, but I think we should create a micro-benchmark for the label + format case and check what the added cost is before we merge this.

With this PR, the string will need an additional clone (since to_string takes a &self).

Ah yeah thats true. I didn't consider that.

Would you add a benchmark here https://github.com/emilk/egui/blob/master/egui_demo_lib/benches/benchmark.rs?

Yeah! I think it would be good to bench both ui.label("hello world"); and ui.label("hello world".to_string());.

There is also a possibility that, in a separate PR, I can remove the need for a String completely, and allow e.g. impl AsRef<str> or whatever would be the suitable alternative. When that day comes it would be good to have an idea of what the performance implications would be. Maybe impl ToString is always gonna be the most ergonomic, and the perf hit is worth it.

In my benchmark the ui.label(format!("…")); becomes around 6% slower with this PR, which I think is acceptable. If you get the CI green, I'll merge it!

Awesome!

I looked into the clippy warnings and most of them are along the lines of

error: this argument is passed by value, but not consumed in the function body
   --> egui/src/widgets/text_edit.rs:207:43
    |
207 |     pub fn hint_text(mut self, hint_text: impl ToString) -> Self {
    |                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ help: consider taking a reference instead: `&impl ToString`
    |
    = help: for further information visit https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/master/index.html#needless_pass_by_value

Supporting that lint would require changing all the callsites to use &thing instead of `thing which would be a breaking change.

@emilk What do you think about this? Should I add #[allow(...)] to the places where the lint fails or is it a breaking change you'd be okay with? I would personally go for adding #[allow(...)] to the methods that takes impl ToString but its of course up to you.

Yeah, mute it. The point of this PR is an ergonomic win, so forcing people to write &format!(…) would be against the purpose.

Done!

Thanks!