http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=42356
--- Comment #17 from Jonathan Wakely <redi at gcc dot gnu.org> 2011-10-23 01:54:17 UTC --- But for this testcase I don't want to be told overload resolution passed or failed, I want to be told it's ambiguous, because that's the error in the testcase that prevents it compiling, and the diagnostic should help fix that problem. You say clang's output is nicer, I think you should look again. Notice there are 6 overloads: freeList<bar>f(), freeList<bar>f(U), and freeList<bar>f(U,V), freeList<baz>f(), freeList<baz>f(U), and freeList<baz>f(U,V), Clang prints 4 errors (which appear to be duplicates, but actually refer to freeList<bar> and freeList<baz> but that's not shown). Why are the other two overloads not shown? Why doesn't it mention that the call is ambiguous? It fails to state the problem, and misleadingly implies overload resolution failed. G++ mentions all six and correctly says they're ambiguous. It would be better if it said why (name lookup found "newNode" in multiple base classes) as clang does for this code (which it gets right): template<class T> struct A { template<class U> void f(U); }; struct C : A<void>, A<int> { }; int main() { C c; c.f<char>(); }