Re: Experimental features

Am 05.10.2022 um 15:38 schrieb Alex Wells <autaut03@gmail.com>: > Advantages of experimental features over extensions: > - they allow changes to the parser > - they are universally supported (by IDE's, parsers etc) because they are > part of a stable language release, not an unpopular/unknown extension > - usages of them can be found in a codebase and then analysed (unlike > extensions that don't have any kind of marker to denote them from regular > code) > - it's easy to implement a universal warning mechanism - for IDEs, static > analysers and PHP itself to warn users about the consequences of using an > experimental feature > - they don't need a versioning mechanism, because they are effectively > always "alpha" - i.e. non-stable, so any PHP release can introduce a > breaking change into an experimental feature Just to maybe have a more complete picture, here are some possible advantages of extensions over experimental features; - Core developers don't have to support/maintain it (they already have a lot on their plate) - Extensions have the notion of alpha/beta/stable releases and they can offer different versions at the same time. - Having to install them manually makes it obvious that you are on your own if you use them in production but the notion of a stable extension is an indication that it is not completely reckless :-) The fact that you explicitly list always being alpha as an advantage for experimental features makes me wonder when I would actually use them: - Certainly not in production? Which limits the amount of exposure such a feature gets to real world usage, therefore limiting the amount of insight in the usefulness too. - A branch for a future version of your code? But the experimental feature could disappear anytime again, do you want to rely on the feature at some point becoming standard? My $.02, - Chris