[RFC] Let the compiler do inlining

[ollie-etl]

In several places in the code here, #defines are used to declare functions. Is there a rational for this?

The drawbacks of this style are it:

• removes any semblance of compiler checked type safety,
• makes generating FFI bindings to this library unnecessarily manual (and more error prone). This is certainly true for rust, and probably for python, although I haven't tried that recently.
• reduces IDE tooling support.

I can't think of a rational for using this style - other than maybe you don't trust a compiler to inline - although that seems a pretty low bar.

I'm willing to submit PR(s) to address this, if desired

A related issue would be using consts in place of #defines for constants. The rational is similar, you gain type safety, tooling support, and simplify FFI generation.

[edmooring]

These are all good points. I don't know of any reasonable argument against them. PRs will be welcomed. @arnopo, any comments?

[arnopo]

Yes your proposal is certainly valid and a PR would help to estimate the impacts.
For now, my only concern is the footprint of libmetal due to the replacement of some #define by constant variables...
So please separate the functions and constants updates into two separate patches.

[ollie-etl]

I'm happy to separate those concerns. I've created #158 to record that

[github-actions]

This issue has been marked as a stale issue because it has been open (more than) 45 days with no activity.