I noticed some people have a ".reloc" section with "fixups" as a flag describing it... Since it seems empty, exactly why should one have it or include it?

Also, why do people put "executeable" in the main section of code when conflicts with "writeable" and we end up having to use long pointers for our variables?

And last random question, what is the main difference between the win32a and win32ax inc files, so i know which one to use on a regular basis?

fixups are needed in DLL files. EXE files are always loaded at address 400000h. DLL files can be loaded anywhere, so the code inside them need to be "relocated". "fixups" flag says fasm to declare relocation data for you

So is there any point to putting executable as a flag to a section that's executed?

yes, processor allows you to protect some paga against executing. Sections marked as "executable" can be executed, and other can't. But unfortunatelly most processors today doesn't support this feature

Paga?

pages

So, i'm assuming that as long as i stick with the 80x86 systems, i don't NEED the executable, but for some odd reson it's included in many sources anyway?

you are assuming wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit

Which means.... I have to start putting my variables in seperate sections adding another 1024 byte (at the least) to my code... Will i have to worry about this when i'm codding in a no OS invironment to make a kernel, or does the processor use this function without the request of the OS?

more precisely: at most 4095

you can keep variables in same section as code, you just have to declater it as "readable" and "writeable"

executable and writeable conflict. if you include executable, you can't have it writeable, unless you found a way to do otherwise, last time i tried it i got an error, but i'll try again real quick.

EDIT: Odd, it's working now. Any time before now and it crashed the program with an access violation...

If you need to modify anything within executable pages area of your module, than you can use VirtualProtect function to make it writable:


http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/memory/base/virtualprotect.asp

Secondly to clear things up a bit: ImageBase can be setup to other value than 400000 but usually there is no point in doing it.

Executable and writable don't conflict.

But don't keep writable data near your code - it can give massive slowdowns on some processors. So, be smart and safe, and use separate .data and .text sections, unless you're writing 4k intros.

Yea, after some rechecking apparently i must have spelled it wrong or something, because before they did conflict.