new PECL docblock extension is a significant step forward in docblock parsing

I just released pecl at pecl.php.net, my first PHP extension. docblock is to phpDocumentor docblocks what the tokenizer extension is to PHP itself. It takes a docblock as an argument, and returns an array of tokens. Parsing docblocks in PHP has always been a major pain, and also very difficult to do correctly, because certain kinds of code simply won't parse correctly without a proper scanner (such as docblocks containing <code> and @fopen - phpDocumentor 1.3.x will try to parse the "@fopen" tag).

The docblock extension is tested only with PHP 5.1.0, but I'm sure it can be adjusted to work with all PHP versions, as the interface with PHP logic is ridiculously simple. Once I have a chance to test it with other PHP versions, it will be available for them as well. To make the scanner, I used re2c at the suggestion of people on the EFNet pecl IRC channel, and this was wonderful. I had been

The extension is fully regression tested, and as such should work in every case. To install, simply use "pecl install docblock" on unix. A windows .dll is not yet available, but probably will be soon on pecl4win.

As you might have guessed, phpDocumentor is alive and well. The single largest problem with version 1.3.x and earlier is that it scales terribly. In addition, the use of Smarty templates is rather unflexible and difficult to maintain properly. Because of these shortcomings, after version 1.3.0 is released, it will be feature-frozen, and only bugs will be fixed. All new features are being developed in a PHP 5.1+ version of phpDocumentor that will have the ability to store data. This means incrementally parsing a large project will be possible, and in fact, the ability to only parse changed files is possible as well. In addition, the use of a few essential PHP extensions like docblock and reflection will be used to better manage the parsing. Reflection will be used for built-in classes like Exception.

However, first, we need to get phpDocumentor 1.3.0 out the door, and to that effect, look for 1.3.0RC4 very shortly. This release will fix critical PHP5-related problems, and a few other issues. There are many small edge case bugs that are more annoyances than functional problems which will be addressed in future releases. Stay tuned!