How can I write a unit test to determine whether an object can be garbage collected?
- by driis
In relation to my previous question, I need to check whether a component that will be instantiated by Castle Windsor, can be garbage collected after my code has finished using it. I have tried the suggestion in the answers from the previous question, but it does not seem to work as expected, at least for my code. So I would like to write a unit test that tests whether a specific object instance can be garbage collected after some of my code has run.
Is that possible to do in a reliable way ?
EDIT
I currently have the following test based on Paul Stovell's answer, which succeeds:
[TestMethod]
public void ReleaseTest()
{
WindsorContainer container = new WindsorContainer();
container.Kernel.ReleasePolicy = new NoTrackingReleasePolicy();
container.AddComponentWithLifestyle<ReleaseTester>(LifestyleType.Transient);
Assert.AreEqual(0, ReleaseTester.refCount);
var weakRef = new WeakReference(container.Resolve<ReleaseTester>());
Assert.AreEqual(1, ReleaseTester.refCount);
GC.Collect();
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
Assert.AreEqual(0, ReleaseTester.refCount, "Component not released");
}
private class ReleaseTester
{
public static int refCount = 0;
public ReleaseTester()
{
refCount++;
}
~ReleaseTester()
{
refCount--;
}
}
Am I right assuming that, based on the test above, I can conclude that Windsor will not leak memory when using the NoTrackingReleasePolicy ?
