GCC is crippled in that regard, but it's a problem with gcc itself. It's written (perhaps deliberately) in a manner which makes it difficult to just use parts o

GCC is crippled in that regard, but it's a problem with gcc itself. It's written (perhaps deliberately) in a manner which makes it difficult to just use parts of it, e.g. just the back-end for code generation. For an example of a less accidentally complex way to do what C++ templates do, look at ML's functors.