[westonruter]

✅ Committed in r64756 (ecdec59).

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This removes the two global PHPStan type aliases in tests/phpstan/base.neon, Maybe_Callable (added in r63451) and Block_Style_Properties (added in r63524), and replaces their uses with types that stay with the docblocks in src/.

Why

A typeAliases entry in base.neon is only defined for core's own analysis, but the docblocks that use it are read elsewhere too. The stubs generated from core (php-stubs/wordpress-stubs) keep each reference to an alias and lose its definition, so PHPStan reports an unknown type at every use for anyone analyzing against those stubs, or against core's source directly, unless they define each alias themselves. The aliases are not present when using a WordPress release package or WordPress/WordPress, since they only include src/.

This was raised by @IanDelMar in the review thread on Optional_Callback in #13890, which proposed a third global alias:

This requires every developer who scans core directly or uses a stubs file to also define Optional_Callback or include WordPress's entire base.neon file.

and later:

I was excited to see WordPress start adopting PHPStan because I expected it to reduce the maintenance burden for both wordpress-stubs and phpstan-wordpress. But type aliases add another layer to maintain.

Alternatives discussed there, such as wordpress-stubs expanding the aliases when generating the stubs, or phpstan-wordpress shipping their definitions, would each add ongoing maintenance downstream, and neither helps anyone who analyzes against core's source directly. Global aliases can also collide with aliases defined elsewhere, which the WP_ prefix suggested in that thread would only reduce.

The Gutenberg dependency

This now blocks Gutenberg, which is adding PHPStan in WordPress/gutenberg#66693. Since Gutenberg tracks core trunk, its analysis should use core trunk's types rather than those of the last WordPress release, so the plan there is to generate the stubs from a pinned core trunk commit with the wordpress-stubs generator (until wordpress-stubs offers a nightly pre-release from trunk). Generated from trunk, the stubs reference both aliases without defining them, and Gutenberg's analysis reports 106 false errors, mostly where a callback is passed to remove_filter() or remove_action().

With this change, stubs generated from this branch contain no reference to an undefined alias, and Gutenberg's analysis reports none of those errors, without Gutenberg defining anything itself. The same applies to the next wordpress-stubs release generated from a version of WordPress that has these docblocks, which would otherwise break the analysis of every project using it.

(Stubs generated from trunk also need php-stubs/wordpress-stubs#498, since the function map currently adds a second @phpstan-return to 152 docblocks where core trunk now has its own.)

Changes

• Maybe_Callable is inlined at its seven uses, as callable|string|array{0: string|object, 1: string}, on remove_filter(), has_filter(), remove_action(), has_action(), _wp_filter_build_unique_id(), and the WP_Hook methods behind them. Most of the uses are functions, which cannot import an alias declared on a class.
• Block_Style_Properties is declared with @phpstan-type on WP_Block_Styles_Registry, where four of its five uses are, along with the explanation of its shape that was in base.neon. WP_REST_Block_Types_Controller imports it with @phpstan-import-type. An alias declared on a class is kept in the generated stubs, as WP_Post's Data_Array and WP_Hook's Hook_Callback already are.
• base.neon has a note in place of the aliases explaining why there are none, so that new aliases are declared on classes too.

The cost is that a type used by functions has to be repeated until PHPStan supports declaring an alias outside a class (phpstan/phpstan#9164). That applies to Optional_Callback in #13890 as well.

Testing

• composer phpstan reports no new errors. The one error it does report, an unmatched baseline entry for $authors_dropdown in class-wp-posts-list-table.php, is reported on trunk as well.
• At level 10, phpstan-diff reports no errors on the changed lines.
• Stubs generated from this branch with the wordpress-stubs generator contain no reference to either alias, and declare Block_Style_Properties on WP_Block_Styles_Registry.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/65817

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Claude Opus 5.5
Used for: Replacing the aliases, verifying the change with PHPStan, generating stubs from this branch and analyzing Gutenberg against them, and drafting the commit message and this description. Reviewed by me.

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This Pull Request is for code review only. Please keep all other discussion in the Trac ticket. Do not merge this Pull Request. See GitHub Pull Requests for Code Review in the Core Handbook for more details.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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