Last night and this morning I’ve been dealing with some odd behaviors in the code I’ve been writing. I know it’s my mistake, the trouble is finding just where the mistake is. I spent time in the debugger observing behaviors that lead me to believe some object instances were not being released thus causing the side-effects I was seeing. As well, the lack of deallocation is a pure memory leak. So, find and fix the leak and many things should improve.

The current tool from Apple for finding memory leaks is the “leaks” tool of Instruments. I do think Instruments is cool and very powerful, but it’s also extremely obtuse and complex. It’s a tool that I don’t need to use all the time (in fact, rarely). Consequently what I learned the last time I needed it has left my head so I have to ramp up all over again. That’s just too much precious time spent, and too many brain cycles distancing myself from the problem at hand. Tools should not get in the way of solving your problem. Before Instruments, Apple had tools like MallocDebug and ObjectAlloc, which were useful and simpler tools but still weren’t the best in terms of interface and usability.

Some years ago I discovered OmniObjectMeter from The Omni Group. It was a godsend. It allowed me to pinpoint and track down memory leaks quickly and easily. It was so simple, so logical, so well thought out. It was easy to get going with it, it was easy to use it, and most importantly you could find your problems very quickly. Unfortunately OmniObjectMeter was left to languish and didn’t work for some time (there was a “secret beta” that helped it limp along). But I’m happy to report it’s back up and kicking with version 2.6 that was released February 2009. You see, I tried using Instruments this morning and while I could see the leak I couldn’t exactly pin down the location that caused the leak. I lamented for OmniObjectMeter, checked the Omni website on a whim, discovered v2.6, downloaded it, and within 5 minutes my leak was found, fixed, and verified.

That’s testimony. 🙂

I’m glad she’s still working. Plus, now OmniObjectMeter is free! I’m proud to say I paid for my copy (well, I got the company to pay for it) all those years ago. So FTC, yet again this is just a satisfied customer telling the tale of his happy experience.