I originally wanted to change TypeAssigner so that it drops spurious Apply nodes but that did not work since the relevant method has type

def assignType(tree: untpd.Apply, fn: Tree, args: List[Tree])(using Context): Apply

and the Apply return type proved too hard to change. So now I am changing code specifically in Inliner and TreeUnpickler to drop these applications. It turns out the inliner problem was already there, and could not have been fixed by a change to the stdlib. ‎tests/pos/i25133.scala‎ failed before the changes in this PR.

I did not write a test for the original problem which involved compilation with different Scala versions. Not sure our test framework can support that easily. @hamzaremmal, do you think you can add that test?

I did not write a test for the original problem which involved compilation with different Scala versions. Not sure our test framework can support that easily. @hamzaremmal, do you think you can add that test?

Yes, I'll do that.

Superseded by #25201. Closing since the branch name had the wrong issue number.