Plans to add type annotations?

[garrypolley]

There are some libraries that try to fill the void of missing type annotations for Python and the AWS libraries.

Is there a reason -- other than development time and effort -- that we do not have types in this repository owned and managed by boto?

If there is stomach to own/manage this I'd be happy to help draft some proposals. I think this line is a big reason the types are not easily read/managed by code consuming boto3.

This creates a new type dynamically which is why static type annotations don't work:

type(str(class_name), tuple(bases), class_attributes)

Seems like the stubs could be auto generated for most combinations if someone did the work -- I'm willing to do the work if there is interest in keeping it.

[tim-finnigan]

Hi @garrypolley thanks for reaching out. We are tracking a feature request related to this here: boto/boto3#1055.

I just brought this up for discussion with the team and can share the following update:

I brought this topic up for discussion with the team and the consensus was that this feature request is not currently under consideration.

Integrating type hints will be considered for the next major version of boto3. In the meantime there are packages such as https://pypi.org/project/boto3-stubs/ you can use for type checking.

There is some discussion in boto/boto3#1055 regarding the challenges of officially supporting type annotations. I don't know the full extent of the technical challenges on this front — but I do think development time and effort are a factor in why this isn't going to get prioritized in the current of boto3 (but potentially in the next major version as mentioned above).