Seeing "include! 'api/kernel32.inc'" within the default packages has me puzzled as to the reasoning. The manual says the file is included unconditionally, but that doesn't make sense to me either. This topic is rather difficult to search the board for - I was hoping to find more examples.

I searched for:

include!
unconditional include

Just like any other "unconditional" command in fasmg, this variant of INCLUDE is evaluated even if inside a block like IF with false condition or inside a macro definition, etc.

For example, if you define a macro and put INCLUDE somewhere inside its body, it simply becomes part of the text of the macro. However, if you use INCLUDE! instead, it is evaluated during the definition of the macro, and you end up with a macro that has the entire contents of included file inside its body.

So the result of using it for the api files is that the file paths are resolved eariler? I don't understand the use in the _end macro. _end becomes a collection of import and api invocations. I thought it might have something to do with the definition of import or api, but I couldn't see any effect in changing them.