.NET WinForms application not releasing components?

Question

Hello:

I'm working with a .NET 2.0 WinForms application in C#.

I noticed something that I thought to be strange during the tear down of my application. In the designer generated dispose method:

    protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (disposing && (components != null))
        {
            components.Dispose();
        }
        base.Dispose(disposing);
    }

I'm seeing a situation where it is passing in disposing = false parameter when components does indeed contain some items. This leads me to believe that these resources are not getting disposed correctly/released because components.Dispose(); is not getting called. Is this ever desired behavior?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Maybe your class needs to dispose of unmanaged resources and therefor implements a finalizer as well?

Something like this:

   ~MyForm()
    {
       this.Dispose(false);
    }

Answer 2

The disposing parameter will be passed as false if Dispose(bool) is being called from the finalizer. Typically this occurs when Dispose() hasn't been called.

---

The Dispose(bool) method isn't actually part of IDisposable; it's used by both IDisposable.Dispose() and by Object.Finalize(). The convention is that IDisposable.Dispose() will call Dispose(true) and Object.Finalize() will call Dipose(false).