The thing is, the "inline" vs "always_inline" thing _could_ make sense,
but sadly doesn't much.
Part of it is that gcc imnsho inlines too aggressively anyway in the
absense of "inline", so there's no way "inline" can mean "you might
inline" this, because gcc will do that anyway even without it. As a
result, in _practice_ "inline" and "always_inline" end up being very close
to each other - perhaps more so than they should.
I do obviously think that we're right to move into the direction that
"inline" should be a hint. In fact, the biggest issue I have with the new
kconfig option is that I think it should probably be unconditional, but I
suspect that compiler issues and architecture issues make that not be a
good idea.
It will take time before we've sorted out all the fall-out, because I bet
there is still code out there that _should_ use __always_inline, but
doesn't.
Linus
--
