One concern I'd have with losing the inlinable .h functions is whether it could slow down either initial block load/verify/indexing, or mining (a bit moot with gpu miners these days).
inlining doesn't have to be in .h files. I removed them because I thought it was silly to put them everywhere without first identifying bottlenecks. At first, I wondered if maybe it
was the result of thoughtful optimization, but this inlining was really put at silly places, so I doubt it was the case. They can easily be brought back, but I think that anyone bringing them back should read about it first (for example:
http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/inline-functions.html#faq-9.3 ). Misused inlining makes the code slower.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I'm having doubt about my statement (that inlined function don't have to be in headers)... I'd have to verify that. After all, I'm only learning C++... But it still doesn't change the fact that optimization should be targeted at measured bottlenecks.