Do I have to "release" my UI objects that I declared as IBOutlets with property attributes "retain" and "nonatomic"?

Question

Do I have to "release" my UI objects that I declared as IBOutlets with property attributes "retain" and "nonatomic"? I ask because I have a UI var declared as so...

@interface MyViewController : UIViewController 
{
IBOutlet UILabel *lblStatus;
}

@property (retain, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *lblStatus;

@end

and my dealloc like so...

- (void)dealloc 
{
  //[lblStatus release];
  [super dealloc];
}

and with the lblStatus UI var commented out, Instruments doesn't seem to detect any leaks when I pop the view off the navigation stack.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Since they're retained, yes, you are responsible for releasing them. Usually, with view controllers, that should happen in -viewDidUnload, like so:

- (void)viewDidUnload
{
    self.lblStatus = nil;
    [super viewDidUnload];
}

(Setting the property's value, with a synthesized retain accessor, will release the old value before setting the instance variable to the new value.)