Re: GCC 3.3 release criteria

[Mike Stump <mstump at apple dot com>]

On Wednesday, February 26, 2003, at 06:57 AM, Robert Dewar wrote:
> > A common coding style (at least around here) is to write rather big
> > and complex inline functions (frequently containing calls to other big
> > inline functions), assuming that they will collapse to relatively
> > little code when instantiated, because of constant folding and
> > dead-code removal. Quite often the resulting code is smaller than the
> > function call to a non-inlined function.
>
> Indeed that is a common style, and I would say that if the compiler 
> does
> not inline in such a case, then even if the inline keyword is advisory,
> this would seem to be a bug!

If people in C land are complaining that C doesn't inline enough, and 
have not complained that it does it too much, then obviously this is a 
compiler bug and C should inline more.  There isn't a reason that C and 
C++ have to use the same exact heuristics.

What I do know, is that it did inline too much in C++ when confronted 
with default inline template code, and that we should not undo this for 
C++.

Can we just bump up the heuristic for C by, say 10x and see how people 
like it.  If they don't complain, and the people that used to complain 
about C stop, then that _is_ a better choice.  If 10x is too small, how 
about 100x?