Exported functions are entirely different than vast majority of the code, the exported ones do need call conventions, so they can be linked. But it's entirely n

Exported functions are entirely different than vast majority of the code, the exported ones do need call conventions, so they can be linked. But it's entirely not true that ONLY functions marked as 'inline' would be inlined. You can also direct GCC to try to integrate all “simple enough” functions into their callers with the option -finline-functions (includeded in -O3).[0]. O2 includes inline small functions [1]: [0]: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Inline.html https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Inline.html [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Optimize-Options.html https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Optimize-Options.html