Andrey Semashev wrote:
Some compilers disable default inlining under certain configurations. GCC has -fno-default-inline for instance. Some libraries might explicitly put inline there to support these configurations.
Well, I guess the one who uses such configurations does so for a reason (i.e. he wants these functions *not* to be inline), so the keyword still doesn't make sense to me. Unless it works around some compiler bug...
Thanks for the answers. So my conclusion is: - the inline keyword for template functions is only required for performance reasons. - My expectation that current compilers know better than me when to inline a function may be too optimistic. My problem is that some code in numeric-bindings uses the inline keyword for template functions quite inconsistently. I had hoped that the inline keyword itself is superfluous, so that I can simply remove it without any further thought. I will now try to use the inline keyword for obvious cases like simple forwarders, and remove it from more complex template functions where I'm unable to decide whether it is a good idea to inline the function. My reason for this is that I don't want to think too much about possible performance impact of inlining, but don't want to deviate too much from the common practice of other boost-libraries. Regards, Thomas