Static hint in Generic Type declaration failing to compile depending on order of type decls about nimskull

[zerbina]

What is the accepted outcome in this situation?

All cases except for the ref HyalosTrackerObj[T, typeof N] one should work. Whether typeof N itself should be allowed is not certain at this time, since whether tyStatic is a type or a value (or both) is still fuzzy, but using using typedesc[static int] as the argument to a generic parameter which is constrained to a static int is always wrong.

Under previous main line versions, I am used to the first 'mostly' functioning.

The code responsible for reporting an error has not changed since the fork happened. Using a recent-ish version of Nim, I also get the "type expected" error.

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The fundamental reason why case 1 fails and case 2 (erroneously) succeeds is that when the ref HyalosTrackerObj type construction is analyzed, the compiler only knows that HylaosTrackerObj is a generic type, but not what its generic parameters are.

For forwarded generic types, the compiler makes the assumption that all generic parameters want types (see semtypes.nim:1729 for the code that handles this case), even if that turns out to be wrong, hence typeof N being accepted but not N (a static-constrained generic parameter cannot be used in a type/typedesc context).

If you were to swap the definitions in the typeof N case, the compiler would correctly report an error.