inline a function inside another inline function in C

Question

I currently have inline functions calling another inline function (a simple 4 lines big getAbs() function). However, I discovered by looking to the assembler code that the "big" inline functions are well inlined, but the compiler use a bl jump to call the getAbs() function.

Is it not possible to inline a function in another inline function? By the way, this is embedded code, we are not using the standard libraries.

Edit : The compiler is WindRiver, and I already checked that inlining would be beneficial (4 instructions instead of +-40).

Answer 1

Depending on what compiler you are using you may be able to encourage the compiler to be less reluctant to inline, e.g. with gcc you can use __attribute__ ((always_inline)), with Intel ICC you can use icc -inline-level=1 -inline-forceinline, and with Apple's gcc you can use gcc -obey-inline.