Prior to VC++ 2013 the VC++ compiler would generate non-inline versions of all inline functions it saw, even if they weren't used. Even now the option to strip

Prior to VC++ 2013 the VC++ compiler would generate non-inline versions of all inline functions it saw, even if they weren't used. Even now the option to strip out these unreferenced inline functions (/Zc:inline) is off by default, because it breaks a few non-conforming programs. So, at least VC++ isn't generating these non-inline versions as aggressively as it used to.