Debugging BAD_ACCESS crashes

Newbies can rely on ARC to handle memory management. But personally, i’d rather handling everything myself. Old school!.

Besides that, you’ll probably need to support iOS 4 devices, as well. So… at least for now, Memory Management is kind of a mandatory chapter, to everyone!.

So what happens when you get a ‘BAD_ACCESS’ crash?. There are just so many scenarios that can trigger that crash… but the most common is simply a message sent to a dealloc’ed object.

Objective C runtime comes with a really powerful feature: Zombies!. By setting a flag, ‘release’ objects are, internally, replaced by a ‘placeholder object’.

What’s the meaning of this?. Simple!. ObjC runtime helps you determine if there is any released object that’s getting sent a message. If that’s the case, you’ll get a message in Xcode console.

How do we enable Zombies?. Mmmmmm… in Xcode 4.3.2, you need to do this:

1. Product >> Manage Schemes >> Bottom left corner… ‘Edit’
2. Select ‘Run’ in the left column
3. Select the ‘Arguments’ tab
4. Add an ‘Environment Variable’ called NSZombieEnabled, with ‘YES’ as value.

Important: Remember to remove this setting after you’re done. Otherwise, ‘Leaks’ instrument will be… useless!

 

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