leanprover / leanprover/lean4

Cannot recurse through type with a private constructor

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#10,789 2 comments 6 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug P-medium
Dominant language
Lean
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Description

Prerequisites

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Description

Defining type with nested recursion where the type recurred through has a private constructor causes a "constant already been declared" kernel error. It appears that the private constructor the elaborator generates for the nested inductive is clashing with the existing private constructor for the type.

Steps to Reproduce
structure Box (α : Type u) where
  private mk ::
    private val : α -- this `private` is not needed to produce the error

/--
error: (kernel) constant has already been declared '_private.«external:file:///lean-nightly/lean-nightly.lean».0.Box.mk'
-/
#guard_msgs in 
structure Rec where
  box? : Option (Box Rec)

Expected behavior:

Lean to succeed in creating type Rec.

Actual behavior:

It is impossible to define type Rec due to this error.

Versions

Lean 4.25.0-nightly-2025-10-13
(Bug has existed since at least v4.22.0.)

Impact

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Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by running the minimal nested-recursion example from the issue and inspect the elaborator and kernel handling of generated private constructors. Trace why the nested Rec declaration produces a private Box.mk collision; done means the example succeeds without a constant-already-declared error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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