Memory Leak Diagnostics

More often than not the occurance of memory leaks seem to be related to bad coding practises and sloppy style.  (For example not fastidiously unsubscribing to events when you're finished with them). Prevention is always better than an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff for sure.  Obviously though, no one is perfect and mistakes will be made, get through peer review and be checked in.

It is surprising though how good the GC actually is, I'm certain that there is loads of sloppy code checked in all the time and more often than not the GC does a better than fair job cleaning up. Isn't managed code grand, allowing us to spend more time writing product. ;-)  Sometimes though, it is going to be unable to detect an object or graph of objects are no longer needed.

When this happens you need to be able to profile what is going on a great detail inside memory and the GC.
SOS.DLL is an assmebly provided by the .NET framework for this purpose exactly. Check out this article on Code Project to find out how to use it.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/Memory_Leak_Detection.aspx

Thanks Marjorie.