-Auxiliary lookup wrapper which requires that looked up family instances are
-not type instances. If called with a vanilla tycon, the old type application
-is simply returned.
+Note [Looking up family instances for deriving]
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+tcLookupFamInstExact is an auxiliary lookup wrapper which requires
+that looked-up family instances exist. If called with a vanilla
+tycon, the old type application is simply returned.
+
+If we have
+ data instance F () = ... deriving Eq
+ data instance F () = ... deriving Eq
+then tcLookupFamInstExact will be confused by the two matches;
+but that can't happen because tcInstDecls1 doesn't call tcDeriving
+if there are any overlaps.
+
+There are two other things that might go wrong with the lookup.
+First, we might see a standalone deriving clause
+ deriving Eq (F ())
+when there is no data instance F () in scope.
+
+Note that it's OK to have
+ data instance F [a] = ...
+ deriving Eq (F [(a,b)])
+where the match is not exact; the same holds for ordinary data types
+with standalone deriving declrations.