http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50779
--- Comment #5 from Ruben Van Boxem <vanboxem.ruben at gmail dot com> 2011-10-19 10:37:37 UTC --- There's this on msdn about inline and dllexport: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xa0d9ste.aspx On top of this, MSVC allows its __forceinline to be used in a dllexport context, so I would assume GCC could do the same thing in this case.