FR: infer types from docblock

[simPod]

FR: infer types from docblock

[Crell]

Unfortunately that would require bringing in a docblock parser, which is a whole other ball of code on its own. Serde goes all-in on attributes specifically for that reason: The attribute parsing is built into the PHP engine, whereas using docblocks would require either some ugly string parsing hack or bringing in a larger existing library like Doctrine annotations. Not using Doctrine Annotations is a deliberate design goal for Serde.

This is exactly why attributes are such a good new feature: You don't need your own user-space parser anymore.

I might accept a patch that does one-off parsing of just @var if it's small and robust enough, but it's not something I am planning to work on myself.