How to ensure 16byte code alignment of Delphi routines?

Answer 1

The discussion here (scroll all the way down) suggests that you cannot do this with the built-in assembler.

Answer 2

One thing that you could do, is to add a 'magic' signature at the end of each routine, after an explicit ret instruction:

asm
  ...
  ret
  db <magic signature bytes>
end;

Now you could create an array containing pointers to each routine, scan the routines at run-time once for the magic signature to find the end of each routine and therefore its length. Then, you can copy them to a new block of memory that you allocate with VirtualAlloc using PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE, ensuring this time that each routine starts on a 16-byte boundary.

Answer 3

As of Delphi XE, the problem of code alignment is now easily solved using the $CODEALIGN compiler directive (see http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/en/Align_code_(Delphi) ):

{$CODEALIGN 16}
procedure MyAlignedProc;
begin
..
end;