[Haskell-cafe] DefaultSignature versus overlapping instance

[Ole Krüger]

Ahoy,

I have the following type class.

-- | An entity whose underlying information spans zero or more columns
class ResultEntity a where
-- | Build an instance of @a at .
parseEntity :: RowParser a

default parseEntity :: (EligibleDataType meta cons a) => RowParser a
parseEntity = parseGeneric

The EligibleDataType constraint allows me to construct a RowParser with the
help of generics.

It is so minimal that I am considering to transform the hole thing into
this.

-- | An entity whose underlying information spans zero or more columns
class ResultEntity a where
-- | Build an instance of @a at .
parseEntity :: RowParser a

instance {-# OVERLAPPABLE #-} (EligibleDataType meta cons a) =>
ResultEntity a where
parseEntity = parseGeneric

This makes defining new instances of ResultEntity obsolete for types that
already satisfy the EligibleDataType constraint (basically everything that
has a Generic instance). It is still possible to provide a hand-rolled
instance.

Undecidable and overlapping instances seem like a big no-no. Even after
reading up on them, I can't get rid of the feeling that this might be
dangerous.

*Is it dangerous? *I am targeting GHC 8.0.1 with this.

- Ole
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