ARC UINavigationController stack not getting deallocated when presented as modal view controller

Question

First: I ported my App to ARC and everything seemed to work. But now I discovered a problem: I have a UINavigationController that is presented modally with some UIViewControllers on its stack. But when I dismiss the modal view controller, the view controllers from the stack don't seem to be deallocated. Here is what I do:

UIViewController* root = [[UIViewController alloc] init];
UINavigationController* navi = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:root];
[self presentModalViewController:navi animated:TRUE];

Then from the root I push some more view controllers, but that doesn't really matter. The fact is when I later call

[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:TRUE];

root doesn't get deallocated. Of course in my code root is a subclass of UIViewController, and I track dealloc and viewDidUnload, but nothing gets called.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

What's inside your navigation controller? It could be that something else (perhaps a view controller inside your navigation controller) is the culprit, which is leading up the chain meaning the navigation controller doesn't get released.

Either way, the code you posted is correct, so if your navigation controller isn't being released after calling dismissModalViewController it would suggest that something else still has an active reference to it or one of its dependencies. I know that doesn't answer your question, but you will probably have to hunt around.

Answer 2

Since you aren't showing actual code, it's hard to tell what is going on with your root view controller.

But, with ARC, if you have a strong pointer to an object, it won't get released. I suspect that you are holding on to this controller after adding it to your navigation controller.

But, without seeing your code, I can't tell.