------- Comment #8 from rguenth at gcc dot gnu dot org 2009-02-19 15:20 ------- Note that the patch only affects extern explicit template instantiations.
/* Check to see whether we know that this template will be instantiated in some other file, as with "extern template" extension. */ external_p = (DECL_INTERFACE_KNOWN (d) && DECL_REALLY_EXTERN (d)); /* In general, we do not instantiate such templates... */ if (external_p /* ... but we instantiate inline functions so that we can inline them and ... */ && ! (TREE_CODE (d) == FUNCTION_DECL && DECL_DECLARED_INLINE_P (d)) For them we would no longer inline (or rather instantiate) not inline declared members. This may affect parts of libstdc++, but I don't know. In YCP the extern trick seems to be used to break a dependency cycle, so the situation is somewhat special. The ultimate question is of course if the standard allows (or even requires) an error here. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=39242