[RFC] Improve the way annotations are enabled

[javiereguiluz]

In a Symfony Flex app, I expected to enable annotations by running this:

$ composer require annotations

However, that installs the symfony/annotation-pack, which only installs the low-level libraries needed for annotations (doctrine/cache and doctrine/annotations) but it doesn't really enable annotations in the application.

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First, this was a problem because it crashed my browser, as reported here.

Second, even if this comment from config/routing.yaml is perfectly clear:

# Depends on sensio/framework-extra-bundle, doctrine/annotations, and doctrine/cache
#   install with composer req sensio/framework-extra-bundle annot

It's a bit disappointing that composer require annotations doesn't enable annotations and you must also execute composer require sensio/framework-extra-bundle

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Solutions:

• Maybe we should create a better recipe for annotations?
• Maybe we should add annotations support in frameworkbundle and forget about the framework extra bundle?

[Pierstoval]

symfony/annotations-pack is the base for annotations, but what you need is annotations for routing, so maybe a routing-annotations pack can be created, which will require sensio/framework-extra-bundle & symfony/annotations-pack?

[ogizanagi]

Note that thanks to symfony/symfony#23044 and FQCN services, we already won't need the sensio/framework-extra-bundle anymore in 3.4, when flex will become the favored way to create a new symfony project.
I'm not sure we need anything else until this. As you said, the comment is self explanatory, and symfony/annotations-pack has nothing to do with routing. I don't think creating a new pack for this is worth it. WDYT?

[weaverryan]

@ogizanagi If I understand you correctly, on 3.4, the user would only need to run composer require annotations (and uncomment out the annotations route import) in order for @Route annotations to work? Is that correct?

Btw, if that's true, what about @Method? I only see this annotation in FWExtraBundle, not Symfony core.

Thanks :)

[ogizanagi]

the user would only need to run composer require annotations (and uncomment out the annotations route import) in order for @Route annotations to work

True :)

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Btw, if that's true, what about @Method? I only see this annotation in FWExtraBundle, not Symfony core.

True again. the @Method annotation isn't part of the core. But it's just a shortcut annotation; you can already configure the methods within the @Route annotation (@Route("foo", methods={"GET"})), so it's probably not a reason good enough to install the FWExtraBundle.

[fabpot]

fixed by #179