What is the best way to track memory management while testing my iPhone App?

Question

While developing my app I have come to realize that the majority of my app crashes have arisen from poor memory management.

I understand I can print or log retain counts through NSLog (@"retain count is:%d",[myInstance retainCount]);

But isn't there a better, less manual method? Possibly a visual representation of your objects and instances?

answered. Cheers, Adam & Jason. :-)

Answer 1

Use the Leaks and Object Allocation tools through XCode.

Run > Start with Performance Tool > ...

Answer 2

As Adam suggests, Instruments is a very useful tool for these kinds of things. It's fairly easy to use, but can be a bit overwhelming at first. I suggest perusing the Instruments User Guide as you get started. It's pretty easy to follow and is helpful until you've used Instruments for a while. Even without reading the guide, however, Instruments is still far easier and more intuitive than littering your code with NSLog() calls and trying to parse the output yourself ;)

Answer 3

In addition to the other answers, I would highly recommend using clang to do a static memory analysis of your code. It won't catch every memory-management error, but it does catch quite a lot. If your chief problem seems to come from memory management errors, clang will go a long way toward finding those errors. Clang is free, at http://clang.llvm.org/

Answer 4

I also find the NSZombie trick useful for tracking down cases of over-release objects.

Basically the link describes a 'trick' so that release'd objects get replaced by NSZombie objects which if they get released again throw exceptions.

You can then use Instruments to track back to where the object was allocated.