Godot: Static GDScript Typing Variant

[razcore-art]

On latest static GDScript typing, there are some virtual functions that return Variant, and there's no way to replicate that in GDScript. What comes to mind is Object._get function for example. There's no way to say func _get(property: String) -> Variant in GDScript, "best" implementation so far is to ignore return value: func _get(property: String).

We need a mechanism to return not just Object & built-in types but Variant as well or maybe there are other options out there too?

[neikeq]

Ignoring the return type is effectively the same as returning Variant.

[razcore-art]

Yeah but that doesn't fix the problem. What do you do with the other virtual methods that expect Variant as parameter? like _set, I mean sure, you can do the same, define it with no typing hints: func _set(property: String, val) -> void, but I guess I prefer having a generic type hint like Variant exposed to make it explicit

[eon-s]

Variant is also present on the class reference as a core type, but is not exposed to GDScript.

[Calinou]

I like the idea of a generic type hint too (similar to TypeScript's any type, whose usage can be enforced using the noImplicitAny flag). In a static typing-first workflow, this makes sure every usage of dynamic typing is carefully considered.

We could then have a GDScript warning (disabled by default) that would be emitted whenever type hints aren't specified somewhere.

[Calinou]

Closing in favor of https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/605, as feature proposals are now tracked on the Godot proposals repository.

[Calinou]

For anyone stumbling upon this issue from a web search, this is now supported in master since the new GDScript was merged: