Can the compiler be more helpful when we need to explicitly, dynamically specialize existentials?

In future, it might be helpful to give your actual use case up front :slight_smile:

If I understand the problem, you'd like the compiler to warn you if you've failed to handle one of a specific list of possibilities, and you want those possibilities to be known as a static type without using an existential box.

In order to do that, you'd have to give the compiler an exhaustive list somewhere. If SwiftUI vended a struct OneOf<...>: View type for public use, then you could do what @Joe_Groff outlined. That is, you could make a protocol requirement produce() -> OneOf<...>, giving an exhaustive list of conforming types inside the angle brackets, and then call that function from your @ViewBuilder body.

However, SwiftUI doesn't want you spelling out its _ConditionalContent type like that. So you'd need some other way of telling the compiler about your exhaustive list. I haven't worked through the example entirely, but unless I'm mistaken, one viable way in which you could do that is to make an internal enum of all the conforming types:

enum _E {
  case p1(P1)
  case p2(P2)
  case p3(P3)
  case p4(P4)
}

You can make _E conform to View and switch over all the cases exhaustively inside _E's implementation of var body: some View, then make produce() -> _E a protocol requirement of P which you can then use as @Joe_Groff demonstrates above.

You'd end up with a bit of boilerplate, but I believe it fulfills your requirements.

Yes, I'm so sorry. I went asking for a solution with the problem simplified too much and paid attention more to what I was asking for then to the problem. I'm really sorry.

In the meanwhile I was exploring turning Ps into enum, but eventually, ended up in between with exactly what you are advising. So thank you, it assured me!

I still would like to hear opinions on exhaustive switching over protocols with definitive conformances but I'm assuming it won't get any priority in the foreseeable future.