Confusing HasField error messages

Consider a simple record type and a module using it using OverloadedRecordDot:

module Record where

data R = R { f :: Int }

module UseRecord where

import Record (R)

f :: R -> Int
f r = r.f

The UseRecord module will fail to compile it does not not import the children of R. However, the error message produced by GHC 9.12 does not clearly suggest the cause:

src/UseRecord.hs:6:7: error: [GHC-39999]
    • No instance for ‘ghc-internal-9.1202.0:GHC.Internal.Records.HasField
                         "f" R Int’
        arising from selecting the field ‘f’
    • In the expression: r.f
      In an equation for ‘f’: f r = r.f
  |
6 | f r = r.f
  |       ^^^

This should be addressed.

Originally described in https://github.com/martijnbastiaan/confusing-hasfield-errors.