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4 commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Robert J. Simmons
31f09da88a
feat: prioritize stuck synthetic MVar problems to improve error messages (#11184)
This PR modifies the error message that is returned when more than one
synthetic metavariable can't be resolved.

The two heuristics used for prioritization are:
- prefer typeclass problems associated with small ranges over typeclass
problems associated with large ranges (I'm pretty confident in this
heuristic)
- do not prefer typeclass problems over other kinds of errors (not as
confident in this heuristic)
2025-11-16 00:09:48 +00:00
Robert J. Simmons
3f4e85413e
doc: improved error messages when typeclass errors are stuck (#11179)
This PR removes most cases where an error message explained that it was
"probably due to metavariables," giving more explanation and a hint.

## Example

```
def square x := x * x
```

Before:

```lean4
typeclass instance problem is stuck, it is often due to metavariables
  HMul ?m.9 ?m.9 (?m.3 x)
```

After:
```
typeclass instance problem is stuck
  HMul ?m.9 ?m.9 (?m.3 x)

Note: Lean will not try to resolve this typeclass instance problem because the 
first and second type arguments to `HMul` are metavariables. These arguments 
must be fully determined before Lean will try to resolve the typeclass.

Hint: Adding type annotations and supplying implicit arguments to functions 
can give Lean more information for typeclass resolution. For example, if you 
have a variable `x` that you intend to be a `Nat`, but Lean reports it as 
having an unresolved type like `?m`, replacing `x` with `(x : Nat)` can get 
typeclass resolution un-stuck.
```

In addition to providing beginner-and-intermediate-friendly explanation
about **why** typeclass instance problems are treated as "stuck" when
metavariables appear in output positions, this PR provides
potentially-valuable improvement even to expert users: it explains
**which of the typeclass arguments are inputs** and therefore need to be
fully specified before typeclass resolution will be attempted. This
information can be tricky to find otherwise.

## Next steps, but probably after this PR

* error explanation
* detecting when the syntactic source is a binop and giving a
special-cased explanation on the binary operators and their associated
typeclasses
* detecting when the syntactic source is a function call, inspecting the
function call's type somewhat, and replacing the generic "replace `x`
with `(x : Nat)` hint with a specialized "replace `foo` with `foo (tyArg
:= Nat)`" hint
2025-11-14 21:25:46 +00:00
Leonardo de Moura
38baeaf373 feat: backtrack when applying default instances if subproblems cannot be solved 2022-05-07 09:56:38 -07:00
Leonardo de Moura
1fd8089d19 fix: register new metavariables created when applying default instance
closes #353
2021-03-16 17:31:51 -07:00