Originally the use of a weak symbol was to provide a fallback for
non-inline supporting compilers. However all compilers (we care about)
support inline keyword (which was not known at the original time of the
work). Furthermore GCC have already worked through the solution and make
it easy to implement.
The use of __GNUC_STDC_INLINE__ pattern in this way manages the fallback
and emits a hard symbol this can be tested with:
CFLAGS="-g" ./configure; make; nm */lib*.o | grep freeMagic1
CFLAGS="-O3" ./configure; make; nm */lib*.o | grep freeMagic1
A hard 'T' symbol is emitted (to provide fallback) with all builds, but
in the -O3 all usage is inlined. So an individual file can decide to
inline or not at the occasion (compile time options) allows.
Darryl L. Miles
e9202c1d29