Query about memory management in iPhone - iphone

I have query regarding memory management for iPhone app.
I have a app in which is also build in for android app as well.
Now we have same functinality and same variables but due to some bad memory management the app gets crashed for iPhone (after 20 - 25 min) and on Android it works perfectly for much longer time without crashing.
In android they have garbage collector but for iPhone sdk we dont have anything like that, so I'm a bit confuse how to proceed.
I have released all the memory allocations in didReceiveMemoryWarning and also in dealloc.

Fisrt you have to find the memory leak. so run the app in debug mode or using instrument first find the problem and update here. and important thing if you get EXC_Bad_Acc means you have to enabled NSZombieEnabled for further detail give me a comment

Before you do what #maheswaran suggests, run the analyzer to determine if you have any easy to find (for the analyzer) memory problems.
Also, it would be good for you to put some time aside and read about how memory management works on iOS.

Related

How to use Instrument in iOS

I have run my app with instrument and i m getting a memory leak but i dont know at which point that memory leak is happening.
How will i know at which point memory is leaking.
Check out this article "Actually finding a memory management error with Instruments", from the big nerd ranch. Creating "heapshots" is a good way to start narrowing down the code parts that show no obvious memory management errors at first glance. But as ACB stated already, if a system library is leaking (rare case) there's not much you can do about it. But most of the time the memory issue is always in your apps' code somewhere! :-)
It says responsible library is quartzcore, and it is only 16 bytes. As long as it is not in the app and the OS is causing the same, you cant do much about this. I would recommend you to ignore this.
If you are facing issues, check the allocation tool -> Live bytes section and check if memory is shooting up when you are selecting a lot of images at the same time.
I can see from your screenshot that your app is already running in your device/simulator and you are trying to run it again with instrument, try to close your app completely from device and then start it again with instrument.
You can read more details about Xcode instrument from Apple.developer InstrumentsUserGuide
Also I have found another good tutorial about this in Raywenderlich blog
Another good documents is here

How does the Instruments stop working automatically?

I try to monitor the allocation through Instruments.
However, when I run to a point, sending some jabber msg, the Instruments stop working automatically.
I wonder how does it stop.
Is there any code in an app could stop the Instruments?
I have faced this problem too. The answer i got was: Instruments does stop if your memory usage is too high. Turn on Allocations, and see the memory usage. In my app, I was calling web services, which were downloading some heavy data, because of which my app's memory consumption would go unto like, 60-70 MB, (for an iPad app). This was causing instruments to crash.
So I had to put some memory fixes. I was able to reduce it to around 12 MB. And then Instruments resumed to work fine. Hope it helps.
It could also be as #Cory Kilger suggests and the app is crashing.
Try running it outside of instruments.
Good luck :)

iPhone: leaks from other Apps taking up RAM?

I'm reading some people stating that if another (3rd party) app on someone's iPhone has been leaking memory, that this may reduce the (mystery) amount of RAM your app would otherwise have available.
This confuses me -- does not all app memory get released when the app is closed by the user? And only one app is open at a time on iPhone?
Normally, any memory that your application allocates will be freed when it exits. However, many of Apple's applications continue running after they're "closed", so memory leaks in Mail, for instance, can affect available memory.
In addition, there are apps out there that claim to free up allocated memory. They really don't do anything other than force some dirty pages out of the buffer cache, but they appear to do something, so people believe they must be doing something useful.
On a jailbroken phone - yes, third party apps can be running at the same time as yours. Running out of memory is common with people who like to have many apps running at once hence the need for task managers, killing tasks etc.
On an unhacked phone - no. Yours is the only non-apple app that is running, no others can run at the same time.
So what can you do? All you can do is try to use the minimum memory possible which you're probably already doing. Realistically you can only test with a factory, unhacked phone, unless you are going to spend hours trying to please everyone. If you think you are maybe using too much you could identify the larger allocations using the instruments tools ("Run with performance tool >" from within Xcode) and then post that chunk of code here to get ideas of how to reduce it.
You should run Instruments and then add the instrument "Memory Monitor" to see the memory use of all of the other processes on your phone. (Add with Window -> Library , then drag the Memory Monitor instrument to the instrument panel.
What I'm still trying to determine is why is iOS releasing memory from MY app, and not all of the other memory pig apps that are not currently running.

iPhone: Can my Leaking App harm other apps?

So, I finished writing my first iPhone App, and I have sent it out to a group of beta testers.
Everybody is happy, except for this one guy who noticed that after having run my app, another app is not starting up anymore.
Not knowing too much about memory management, I started looking at the Leaks graphs in Instruments, and noticed, that there are some leaks going on in my app.
Three questions:
Are leaks always bad? The biggest leak is 15k on a total of 5,1 MB allocated memory.
Will Apple refuse my app because of leaks?
Is not all the memory automatically freed up as soon as my app quits? Could it be that my leaking app is harmful to other apps?
Thanks
Sjakelien
Each app is supposed to run in its own "sandbox," and is by design not supposed to affect any other app installed on the phone. If your reviewer found a case where your app really did affect another app, that's definitely not your fault, although I'd love to know how that was accomplished ;).
My guess is, though, that your reviewer's other app broke completely independently of your app, and he/she is spuriously attributing the fault to your app. Ask him to try to reproduce the problem (uninstall both apps, install the other app, install your app).
what the other two answers say i agree with, however nobody has answered the first question ("Are leaks always bad") directly. i would say that yes they are. it's true that your program can possibly run with them for long periods of time without issue. and the OS should clean up the memory after termination (unless there's a bug in the OS, as said before). but eventually the leak will become an issue for someone at some point when they run long enough. also, even if it doesn't become an issue, it's probably a best practice to always fix memory leaks that you know about.
Any leak that persists beyond the exit of your application is an OS bug, and hence Apple's problem.
It would be unfair to reject your app on this basis.
I don't know if that's any comfort to you.
For the record, my app provokes a leak in mediaserverd.
The leak is a tiny bit smaller in the 3.0GM.
Another incorrect usage of an API crashed mediaserverd.
Also 3.0GM. Nasty. I'd have preferred an error code, however
this could theoretically be used to work around the leak.
It depends on what "memory" you are leaking. Are you using device storage space to cache something? In theory then it's possible that you've used up enough space the other app cannot start because it needs a certain amount of free space.
If we're talking physical memory, then no. When your app is dead it is dead. You could ask them to restart the device and see if they have the same issue.
Apple does approve apps that have memory leaks.
That said, we thoroughly check that none of "our code" leaks before submitting to Apple because users don't like having an app suddenly shut down on them. I say "our code" because there are memory leaks in the framework that are not your doing. Thus Apple approves apps with memory leaks.
Also, I am doubtful your app has adversely affected the user's other app. I have not seen that behavior.

Game crashes on the actual iPhone but simulator? memory problem?

I have built my first game using Cocos2D. It worked fine on the simulator. But when it runs on the actual iPhone, it crashes. I don know why. Thought it was memory leaks, so i tried to detect, but no leaks found. I tried to increase and decrease frame rate, neither both succeeded. Anyone experienced please help me out. I am really stressed now. If anyone had the same issue please share with me your opinion.
Yours thanksfully.
I've run into similar issues (I also use Cocos, but I don't think this is Cocos specific). The best thing to do is plug-in your iPhone and watch the stacktrace when it crashes (or retrieve the stacktrace after the fact)
This happened to me a lot because the resources between the iPhone and the simulator were not in sync; in other words, some how resources would be available to the simulator (eg: images) but those same resources were not transferred to the iPhone for whatever reason. Sometimes, if I ran 'clean' on the simulator, I would observe the same issue.
It's extremely frustrating to debug these types of issues, but you'll get used to it.
I agree with Dominic - we definitely need more information to be able to help you - do you have the output from the console or the stack from the debugger?
Also, while memory leaks are a Bad Thing, they rarely lead to crashes directly. They will increase the amount of memory used by your app so if you're memory intensive then you might get a problem but they're not the first place I'd look to try to debug this.
Try running the app in Instruments and watch the memory usage graph - then not only can you see the total that your app is using but you can get an idea of which sections of your app use the most and can focus your efforts in reducing it.
Sam
Sorry, but you need to specify more details. How does it crash? What does the error log say? One thing you might look into is the amount of memory, your game consumes. If it uses more than 64 MB on the actual device, the OS will very likely just terminate it. In the simulator on the other hand, your app might use lots more memory without a problem.
I have found tools like Instruments and NSZombieEnabled to be very helpful in tracking down issues such as these.
Without more information, I would try the following steps:
Delete the app from the device and simulator (using the tap-and-hold technique to make your icons jiggle) and reinstall it. Sometimes a setting (or lack of a setting) in the user defaults will cause a crash, and those don't get wiped out unless you delete and re-run your app.
Also try the "simulate memory warning" option in the simulator and see if that gets it to crash.