Using the “Prolog in Scala” to find available type class instances

Question

Considering https://speakerdeck.com/folone/theres-a-prolog-in-your-scala, I would like to \"abuse\" the Scala type system to find all instances of e.g. CanBuildFrom

Answer 1

This can be done (at least in some cases) with compiler internals

import scala.language.experimental.macros
import scala.reflect.internal.util
import scala.reflect.macros.{blackbox, contexts}

object Macros {

  def allImplicits[A]: List[String] = macro impl[A]

  def impl[A: c.WeakTypeTag](c: blackbox.Context): c.Tree = {
    import c.universe._

    val context = c.asInstanceOf[contexts.Context]
    val global: context.universe.type = context.universe
    val analyzer: global.analyzer.type = global.analyzer
    val callsiteContext = context.callsiteTyper.context

    val tpA = weakTypeOf[A]

    val search = new analyzer.ImplicitSearch(
      tree = EmptyTree.asInstanceOf[global.Tree],
      pt = tpA.asInstanceOf[global.Type],
      isView = false,
      context0 = callsiteContext.makeImplicit(reportAmbiguousErrors = false),
      pos0 = c.enclosingPosition.asInstanceOf[util.Position]
    )

    q"${search.allImplicits.map(_.tree.symbol.toString).distinct}"
  }
}

allImplicits[CanFoo[_, String]]
// List(value canFooBoolString, value canFooDblString, value canFooIntString)

Tested in 2.13.0.