Description

Doctrine Annotations have served us well, but PHP attributes are the future.

Our strategy for Symfony 6 was to support Doctrine Annotations and PHP attributes as two ways of annotating pieces of configuration to code. In Symfony 7, attributes will be the only supported way. However, we still use the word "annotation" in the codebase in an abstract sense (PHP attributes are a form of annotation). This might be confusing, so we might consider using the work "attribute" everywhere consistently.

I've opened this issue to collect all occurrences of the term and to discuss the possible impact on downstream projects.

• The serializer integration of FrameworkBundle exposes a configuration option enable_annotations. Rename to enable_attributes.
• The validation integration of FrameworkBundle exposes a configuration option enable_annotations. Rename to enable_attributes.
• The Routing and Serializer components organize their attribute classes in a namespace called Annotation. Rename that namespace to Attribute.
• When loading routes from attributes, the loader type is annotation although attribute is already an alias for that. Make attribute the only possible type.
• Serializer uses a class named AnnotationLoader to load metadata from attributes. Rename to AttributeLoader.
• Validation uses a class named AnnotationLoader to load metadata from attributes. Rename to AttributeLoader.
• Routing contains classes AnnotationClassLoader and AnnotationDirectoryLoader for loading routes from attributes. Rename to AttributeClassLoader and AttributeDirectoryLoader.

If you find more TODOs, please drop a comment.