On Wed, Dec 3, 2025, at 22:04, Paul M. Jones wrote:
> Hi Rob,
>
> (We've been using a lot of PHPStan type aliasing lately in the Star-Interop
> work, so this topic is timely.)
>
> Is there some possibility of making the aliases more classlike so they can be
> autoloaded? A la:
>
> namespace Foo;
> type number { as int|float; }
>
> Then elsewhere:
>
> use Foo\number;
> function sum(number $a, number $b): number { return $a + $b; }
>
> Let me know if I've missed something fundamental.
>
>
> -- pmj
They fundamentally cannot be autoloaded because autoloading happens at runtime,
not compile time. At least, with the current autoloader. Autoloading type
aliases would need to have a fundamentally different type of autoloading that
doesn’t exist today.
— Rob
