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Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 19:05:58 +0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Native Annotation Syntax
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 24/11/2015 16:30, Pedro Cordeiro wrote:
> I'd been reading some old RFCs recently, and I found two RFCs on the
> subject of annotations, both by Guilherme Blanco. The first one, which
> proposed a native syntax for annotations, is marked as 'declined', and I
> couldn't find a discussion for it anywhere. The second one, which proposes
> retrieving annotation from DocBlocks through reflection is 'inactive', with
> no further explanation.
>
> I'd really like to see native annotation support for PHP that doesn't live
> in comments.
>
> Is there a reason those RFCs were dropped, or was it just lack of interest?

I think one of the stumbling blocks in recent discussions of annotation 
support is just how much support should be provided; off the top of my 
head, this could be:

- a few extra functions in reflection classes to parse the items within 
a docblock (docblocks are already handled in reflection separately from 
normal comments)
- automatic instantiation of a set of standard Annotation objects with 
the text content above
- automatic instantiation of classes based on the annotations provided
- built-in support for applying annotations to the objects they appear 
on, perhaps in the form of full Aspect-Oriented Programming support

At first sight, these seem like details which could be tweaked later, 
but they make a difference to what syntax to standardise: is the 
annotation name just a string, or a valid class name? is the value of 
the annotation just a string, or a parseable PHP expression? is it more 
useful to use the de facto existing syntax in DocBlocks, or to add a new 
keyword or operator? etc

The devil, as ever, is in the detail.

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]