From 443cc8dedb4095cb93619adc22dced48f4528c38 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: David Tolnay <dtolnay@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:20:23 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] Document tagged dispatch approach

---
 src/kind.rs | 46 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 46 insertions(+)

diff --git a/src/kind.rs b/src/kind.rs
index 3ff3e36..1789a62 100644
--- a/src/kind.rs
+++ b/src/kind.rs
@@ -1,3 +1,49 @@
+// Tagged dispatch mechanism for resolving the behavior of `anyhow!($expr)`.
+//
+// When anyhow! is given a single expr argument to turn into anyhow::Error, we
+// want the resulting Error to pick up the input's implementation of source()
+// and backtrace() if it has a std::error::Error impl, otherwise require nothing
+// more than Display and Debug.
+//
+// Expressed in terms of specialization, we want something like:
+//
+//     trait AnyhowNew {
+//         fn new(self) -> Error;
+//     }
+//
+//     impl<T> AnyhowNew for T
+//     where
+//         T: Display + Debug + Send + Sync + 'static,
+//     {
+//         default fn new(self) -> Error {
+//             /* no std error impl */
+//         }
+//     }
+//
+//     impl<T> AnyhowNew for T
+//     where
+//         T: std::error::Error + Send + Sync + 'static,
+//     {
+//         fn new(self) -> Error {
+//             /* use std error's source() and backtrace() */
+//         }
+//     }
+//
+// Since specialization is not stable yet, instead we rely on autoref behavior
+// of method resolution to perform tagged dispatch. Here we have two traits
+// AdhocKind and TraitKind that both have an anyhow_kind() method. AdhocKind is
+// implemented whether or not the caller's type has a std error impl, while
+// TraitKind is implemented only when a std error impl does exist. The ambiguity
+// is resolved by AdhocKind requiring an extra autoref so that it has lower
+// precedence.
+//
+// The anyhow! macro will set up the call in this form:
+//
+//     #[allow(unused_imports)]
+//     use $crate::private::{AdhocKind, TraitKind};
+//     let error = $msg;
+//     error.anyhow_kind().new(error)
+
 use crate::Error;
 use std::error::Error as StdError;
 use std::fmt::{Debug, Display};