> Arguably, the decision to keep using the C linker and use name mangling and template expansion in the compiler instead of making the linker smarter (or adding

> Arguably, the decision to keep using the C linker and use name mangling and template expansion in the compiler instead of making the linker smarter (or adding a phase between compilation/assembly and linking) was a mistake. I don't know that it was a mistake per se, but this problem with template compilation overhead is definitely a seemingly inevitable consequence. > Certainly incremental compilation and linking would be easier if template expansion were performed on object code (or a low-level intermediate representation) rather than source code. This is effectively what happens... it just happens at compile time instead of link time. Given this template: <bar.hpp> template <typename foo> foo bar(foo x) { return foo; } a compiler is asked to compile: #include <bar.hpp> //source code is parsed and intermediate representation generated by the compiler int x = bar(some_int); //performs template expansion on said object code float y = bar(some_y); //performs template expansion on said object code //bar.hpp's source is examined only once! This is why you can't do some things in templates that you can do with say, C macros (and vice-versa).