Xamarin iOS memory leaks everywhere

Question

We\'ve been using Xamarin iOS for the last 8 months and developed a non-trivial enterprise app with many screens, features, nested controls. We\'ve done our own MVVM arch, c

Answer 1

Couldn't be agree more with the OP that "Garbage Collection is essentially broken in Xamarin".

Here's an example shows why you have to always use a DisposeEx() method as suggested.

The following code leaks memory:

1. Create a class the inherits UITableViewController

   public class Test3Controller : UITableViewController
   {
       public Test3Controller () : base (UITableViewStyle.Grouped)
       {
       }
   }
   

2. Call the following code from somewhere

   var controller = new Test3Controller ();
   
   controller.Dispose ();
   
   controller = null;
   
   GC.Collect (GC.MaxGeneration, GCCollectionMode.Forced);
   

3. Using Instruments you will see that there are ~ 274 persistent objects with 252 KB never collected.

4. Only way to fix this is add DisposeEx or similar functionality to the Dispose() function and call Dispose manually to ensure disposing == true.

Summary: Creating a UITableViewController derived class and then disposing/nulling will always cause the heap to grow.