F# interface inheritance failure due to unit
This looks like a nasty corner-case in the F# language, but I'm not sure if it qualifies as a by-design limitation or a bug in the compiler. If it is by design limitation, then the error message should say that (because currently, it doesn't make much sense).
Anyway, the problem is that the F# compiler doesn't generate code that actually contains the unit
type in the IL. It replaces it with void
(when used as a return type) or with empty argument list (when used as a method or function argument).
This means that in the MyClass
type, the compiler decides to compile the MyFun
member as a method that takes string
and returns void
(but you cannot use void
as a generic type argument, so this just doesn't work). In principle, the compiler could use the actual unit
type in this case (because that's the only way to get it working), but that would probably create other inconsistencies elsewhere.
Your trick with creating MyUnit
is, I think, a perfectly fine way to solve the problem. Even the core F# library uses something like MyUnit
in some places of the implementation (in asynchronous workflows) to deal with some limitations of unit
(and the way it is compiled).