getDirectiveDeclaration not sufficient to declare directives

[mfellner]

According to https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphql-tools/schema-directives/#declaring-schema-directives when implementing the getDirectiveDeclaration on a custom SchemaDirectiveVisitor, it is not necessary to declare the directive in the SDL.

However this is no longer the case with graphql-tools >= 4.0.0 and graphql-js >= 14.0.0. Related issues are

• upgrade to graphql-tools@4.0.0 breaks custom schema directives ardatan/graphql-tools#957
• Bit confused on getDirectiveDeclaration ardatan/graphql-tools#1022

Support for the documented solution is only considered for the next release of graphql-tools (ardatan/graphql-tools#1337).

The docs should be updated to reflect that.

[yaacovCR]

We are moving away from considering support for the documented solution, as the problem is with graphql-js v14 and the spec, not the tooling, and the available workarounds seem sufficient.

See ardatan/graphql-tools#1022 (comment)

The independent docs at graphql-tools should eventually be updated to reflect that.

[glasser]

Right now we are planning to remove support for schemaDirectives in Apollo Server 3, because the project that implements it (graphql-tools) considers it to be a legacy API. Folks who want to use schemaDirectives or its non-legacy replacement schemaTransforms can use @graphql-tools/schema directly to create a schema passed in with new ApolloServer({schema}); issues relating to these options should probably be opened in the graphql-tools repo.