Type hints

[StefanBRas]

I wanted to hear about the possibility of adding type hints to the codebase. I saw the issue about py.typed but wasn't sure how much I should read into it.

For me personally it would make it more ergonomic to work with. Not necessarily the whole codebase, but adding type hints to the parameters and return types of public functions would help a lot. It looks like the information is already present in many of the docstrings.

I'm willing to do that PR if you'd accept it. I know I could add it as type stubs, but that's more complexity and more room for errors

[mara004]

Hmmm, unfortunately I'm not much a fan of type hints, personally.

I wouldn't rule it out entirely (maybe the type system has improved since I last looked into it) but I also wouldn't do it or take a PR just now.

[StefanBRas]

That's fair albeit I obviously would like you to reconsider. I would say that the type system has improved a lot of the last few years, but here I don't think that matters much - there could be a very large coverage of the public API with just adding simple types like int, float and bool. That will work on all python versions that is supported by pypdfium2. The maintenance of that would be minimal and the type information already lives in the docstring.

[mara004]

I'll think about it, but I'm afraid the typing story is not a priority for me at this time, as I'm currently immersed in some other aspects of the project (particularly, building our own binaries as a second footing for the project, and getting the initial v5 release out).
Unfortunately I feel like I'm spending more time on the setup/packaging/ci side of the project than I do working on actual runtime code -- and I don't think I'm alone with that experience among python binary extension maintainers, either...

[StefanBRas]

No worries, I get that it's not a priority.

I still think that in the long term, types would help a lot. Surveys show that the large majority (90%) of python developer use types "Always" or "often" so it's something that many users will like. And as said I can do a PR if you change your mind. And now I'll stop trying to convince you haha.

I might do it as type stubs instead and add it to typeshed, but let's see.

[mara004]

Interesting, I didn't know of that survey yet. On the other hand, as the post itself acknowledges, there were only ~750 answers as of posting, and:

It makes sense that a survey about types is going to get higher responses from type enthusiasts. If folks are interested in sharing this through other channels to help get more responses, I would greatly appreciate it. I’m tempted to sell it as something a little more pessimistic to try to get feedback from typing skeptics. Feel free to share in your own words if you like.

I don't usually look at discuss.python.org anymore given past negative experiences and to avoid distraction, but that also means I'm missing out on surveys and so on...

[StefanBRas]

Yeah, I'm not shy to admit that I just googled "python typing survey" and took the top one - which fortunately supported my opinion haha.
My impression is though that the whole ecosystem mostly uses type hints now. But again, I'm just providing my take on it and saying that it would help my workflow a lot