Error handling

raylib-rs uses structured error types for all fallible operations. The safe crate defines a rich set of typed errors in raylib::core::error — each domain (images, textures, fonts, audio, models, etc.) has its own error enum. A top-level RaylibError aggregates all of them via #[from] conversions for callers that don't need to distinguish the source.

Drawing operations are infallible — there is no error path for draw_rectangle, draw_text, etc. Errors arise only at resource load time.

API surface

• InvalidImageError — returned by Image::load_image, Image::load_image_from_mem, etc. Variants include NullDataFromFile (file not found / unsupported format), ZeroWidth/ZeroHeight, UnsupportedFormat.
• LoadTextureError — returned by load_texture, load_texture_from_image, load_render_texture.
• LoadFontError — returned by load_font, load_font_ex.
• LoadSoundError — returned by RaylibAudio::new_sound, new_wave, new_music.
• LoadModelError — returned by load_model, load_model_from_mesh.
• RaylibError — top-level enum aggregating all domain errors via From impls; useful when propagating with ? through a function that loads multiple resource types.
• raylib::init().build() panics on a second call (window context is process-global). All other APIs are Result-based.

Example

# extern crate raylib;
use raylib::core::texture::Image;
use raylib::core::error::InvalidImageError;

fn main() {
    match Image::load_image("nonexistent.png") {
        Ok(img) => {
            println!("loaded {}x{} image", img.width(), img.height());
        }
        Err(InvalidImageError::NullDataFromFile) => {
            eprintln!("file not found or unsupported format");
        }
        Err(e) => {
            eprintln!("unexpected image error: {e}");
        }
    }
}

Gotchas

• Error variants are typed, not stringly-typed. Unlike some thin C-binding layers, raylib-rs maps sentinel return values to named enum variants. This makes match exhaustive and lets you distinguish "file not found" from "GPU upload failed" without parsing a message string.
• Errors use thiserror. Every error type implements std::error::Error and Display. They compose naturally with anyhow, eyre, or any Box<dyn Error> handler.
• ? propagation works if you use RaylibError as your function's error type — every domain error has a From impl into it. Alternatively, the individual domain errors can be mapped with .map_err(RaylibError::from).
• raylib::init().build() panics, not Err. Double-init is a programming error (not a runtime condition), so it panics rather than returning Err.

See also

• Safety — how the safe wrapper prevents UB.
• Textures and images — Image and Texture2D load paths.
• RaylibError docs.rs