typelevel / typelevel/cats

Ambiguous implicits when requesting Eq when both Hash and Order are present

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Scala
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Description

Now that the RC ship has sailed, I don't know if this should be addressed at all.

Due to the fact that PartialOrder and Hash both extend Eq, we will run into ambiguous implicits when writing:

def fun[A:Hash:Order](x: A, y: A): Boolean = {
  x === y
}

One solution is to cap the hierarchy by defining HashPartialOrder, HashOrder in libraries that depend on cats, at the loss of some interoperability. Another option is to have Hash only depend implicitly on Eq (I guess that's the solution used in the cats-mtl library, right?)

Pinging @ctongfei

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 reproducing the fun[A:Hash:Order] example and inspect how PartialOrder, Hash, Order, and Eq are related. Done would require a decided approach to resolving the ambiguous implicits and agreement that the change should be made.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
scala
Domain
developer-experience
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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