[TxMt Plugins] Re: reference counts on project NSWindows

[Niko Matsakis]

While I am still curious as to what is going on here, I decided to rewrite the code to take a different approach.  Now when I see an NSWindowWillClose notification I remove my inserted views and free my own controller, which ensures that my objects are freed when the user closes the window (and, assuming I retain no references to the NSWindow, the NSWindow should be freed as well).


Niko

On Feb 6, 2010, at 10:21 AM, Niko Matsakis wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> So, I have more-or-less finished the plugin I e-mailed about earlier [1].  It inserts a WebPreview-like pane into the project window which tracks the current document.  I have one problem remaining, however, which concerns memory management.  
> 
> The plugin inserts a number of NSViews into the NSWindow.  These NSViews have an associated controller. I would like for this controller to be deallocated at the same time that the NSWindow is deallocated.  To achieve this, I am using objc_setAssociatedObject() with mode OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN to associate the object with the window; the only outstanding reference comes from this association.  When the window is released, the controller should therefore be freed. 
> 
> I believe that this system works fine because I have a standalone application which also uses the same plugin code, and in that case the controller is freed once the window is freed.  Furthermore, if I observe the NSWindowWillClose notification, I see that my controller has only one outstanding reference (i.e., retainCount == 1) at the time that the window will close, and that the retain counts of the NSWindow are the same whether or not my preview code is installed into the window.
> 
> Unfortunately, when the plugin runs inside of TextMate, the controller is never freed.  I can only assume this is because the NSWindows themselves are never freed, but that seems strange.    Does anyone know a way for me to verify whether the NSWindows are being freed?  Or can anyone think of a reason that this scheme would not work in TextMate?  Or just a better scheme in general to achieve the same goal of having a controller that is freed when the window is freed?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any insight.
> 
> 
> regards,
> Niko
> 
> [1] Available from <http://github.com/nikomatsakis/SpanakopitaPlugin/> if you are curious.
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