Found out that this works in dplyr 0.7.4:

library(dplyr)
x <- data_frame(name = c("a", "b"), type = c("integer", "string"))
x %>% group_by(name) %>%
    select(name) %>%
    setdiff(select(x, name)) %>%
    left_join(x, by = "name")

# A tibble: 0 x 2
# Groups:   [?]
# ... with 2 variables: name <chr>, type <chr>

but not in dplyr 0.7.5:

Error in grouped_df_impl(out, vars$alias[groups_in_alias], group_drop(x),  :
  no variables to group by

We found and pushed a fix for sparklyr with sparklyr/sparklyr#1510, but reporting to consider fixing upstream.