Re: Re: PHP Annotations RFC + Patch

On Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:59:13 +0100, Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> wrote:

At 17:51 13/09/2010, Gustavo Lopes wrote:

On Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:28:47 +0100, Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> wrote:

At 16:39 13/09/2010, Pierre Joye wrote:

You are not serioulsy suggesting to use phpdoc for runtime annotation support? Are you?

I actually am (either that or get what you want done in some other way). It's a rare enough use case that I think it's a very reasonable compromise. The disadvantages of adding a whole new branch of syntax, for this rare use case, far outweigh its advantages - IMHO.

Rare use case? Have you seen any recent Java framework? Or Java EE 6? Or design by contract in C#? A declarative programming style can be very handy.

Framework code (as in code that actually goes into a framework, not code that uses a framework) represents a tiny percentage of the PHP codebase at large. Most of it is application code.

You misunderstood me. When I say the frameworks use annotation I don't mean they use annotations in their own implementation (that's not particularly relevant for the reason you present). What I mean is that the frameworks recognize annotations the application code has so that the framework user can do stuff like injecting objects, run methods in transactions or check post-conditions in a declarative fashion, by adding annotations. By the way, you ignored the rest of the e-mail. How do you evaluate the complexity/return of features such as annotations with that of e.g. LSB? Why are they not adequate for PHP, but may be for other languages? -- Gustavo Lopes