Wolfgang Bangerth

What should we do here?

What's the status of this? Can we get it done for 9.5?

What's the status here?

I think the underlying reason why `std::pow` is slow is because it has to deal with fractional powers. But here, we only have integer powers (and positive integers on top),...

Yes, that's why we already have #13321 :-)

Yes, `Utilities::pow()` is all you need now that it allows floating point numbers as arguments (#16439).

We haven't had action on this PR since last year. Bumping the release one forward again.

I've found my way back to this PR in mysterious ways and the discussion at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25056802/c11-explicit-instantiation-declaration-vs-explicit-instantiation-definition/25057121#25057121 . The conversation above raised the suggestion that we put `extern template class X;`...

Can we close this one? The assertion has been added, and I think that going beyond that would require work nobody is currently motivated to do.

@luca-heltai What do we want to do with this patch w.r.t. the upcoming release?