Understand Memory Leak Tracking Concepts

This page describes leak tracking concepts. See other information on memory leaks here.

Before reading about leak tracking, understand Dart memory concepts.

Addressed leak types

The leak tracker catches leaks related to the timing of object disposal and garbage collection (GC). When memory is being managed properly, an object's disposal and GC should occur in quick succession. After disposal, an object should be garbage collected during the next GC cycle. The tool uses this assumption to catch cases that do not follow this pattern.

By monitoring disposal and GC events, the tool detects the following types of leaks:

Not disposed, but GCed (not-disposed)

Definition: a disposable object was GCed, without being disposed first. This means that the object's disposable content is using memory after the object is no longer needed.
Fix: invoke dispose() for the object to free up the memory.

Disposed, but not GCed (not-GCed)

Definition: an object was disposed, but not GCed after certain number of GC events. This means that a reference to the object is preventing it from being garbage collected after it's no longer needed.
Fix: To fix the leak, assign all reachable references of the object to null after disposal:
```
myField.dispose();
myField = null;
     ```
```

Disposed and GCed late (GCed-late)

Definition: an object was disposed and then GCed, but GC happened later than expected. This means the retaining path was holding the object in memory for some period, but then disappeared.
Fix: the same as for not-GCed

Disposed, but not GCed, without path (not-GCed-without-path)

Definition: an object was disposed and not GCed when expected, but retaining path is not detected; that means that the object will be most likely GCed in the next GC cycle, and the leak will convert to GCed-late leak.
Fix: please, create an issue if you see this type of leak, as it means something is wrong with the tool.

Culprits and victims

If you have a set of not-GCed objects, some of them (victims) might not be GC-ed because they are held by others (culprits). Normally, to fix the leaks, you need to only fix the culprits.

Victim: a leaked object, for which the tool could find another leaked object that, if fixed, would also fix the first leak.

Culprit: a leaked object that is not detected to be the victim of another object.

The tool detects which leaked objects are culprits, so you know where to focus.

For example, out of four not-GCed leaks on the following diagram, only one is the culprit, because, when the object is fixed and GCed, the victims it referenced will be also GCed: