Cleaning of IDisposable resources

Question

Now I understand that when I have finished with a resource that implements IDisposable, I should call the Dispose() method to clean up the resources.

To what extent should I be doing this.

My example is:

I am creating a NotifyIcon in code, so I do something like this:

var icon = new Icon(...);
var contextMenu = new ContextMenu(...);
var contextMenuButton1 = new MenuItem(...);
var contextMenuButton2 = new MenuItem(...);
var contextMenuButton3 = new MenuItem(...);
// ...
var notifyIcon = new NotifyIcon(...);

All of these have a Dispose() method. Normally I would only keep reference to the notifyIcon and just dispose that.

However, it won't dispose of the Icon or the Context Menu or its items, so should I actually be keeping a reference to everything, or at least have a List<IDisposable>?

OR can I assume because of the scope of these that the garbage collector will call dispose on these for me (when I dispose of the NotifyIcon)?

Answer 1

This depends a lot on the scenario. For example, in a lot of UI frameworks, adding something like a menu-item or icon to a parent control / container makes the parent assume responsibility for that item. Thus disposing the parent will dispose all the ancestors at the same time. So: if we assume that these new controls you are creating will be added to the UI, then no: you don't usually need to do anything manually. However, if you are frequently adding/removing controls, then you will need to figure out when you take ownership of an element (i.e. if you remove it from the UI, it is now "yours", not the UI's - and it is your responsibility to dispose it).

Answer 2

Generally, that's what the using statement is for, eg.:

using (var icon = new Icon(...))
{
}

The using statement calls the Dispose method as soon as it ends (and even if there's an exception inside, it will still properly dispose of the variable). You can even "chain" them to reduce nesting:

using (var icon = new Icon(""))
using (var icon2 = new Icon(""))
using (var icon3 = new Icon(""))
{

}

You want to call Dispose as soon as you can. If you don't, it will still be called at some point, usually during finalization of the object, but that might already be too late (for example, disposing of a file handle will allow another file handle to be opened, while if you don't dispose of it soon enough, the second call will throw an exception).

The reason there's a Dispose method in the first place is because Icon has some native resources in the background (it uses a native Icon object, this is all related to Windows and GDI+). These resources are "scarce" (a better example is the file handle), and as such you don't want to wait for the GC to collect them eventually - that's more costly (finalization has a non-trivial cost if done extensively) and can block access to the resource (even with the Icon, I remember an issue where you could only allocate so many native bitmaps per process, then you're starved).

If you don't care about the cost, and if the resource isn't scarce enough to matter, and if the using or Dispose is more trouble than it's worth - you don't have to call Dispose. It will be called eventually.

As examples of where you should pretty much always call dispose manually: Files, Streams, Sockets, large blocks of native memory.

Answer 3

From MSDN: `

When a new NotifyIcon is created, ... [it] will exist until its container releases it to garbage collection.

If you use the constructor that takes a container (typically a System.ComponentModel.Container) owned by a Form), then Dispose will be called when the container is disposed - i.e. when the Form is closed.

The examples in the MSDN documentation linked above use a Form's container in this way.

If you use the default constructor, there is no container, and you will have to manage the lifetime of the NotifyIcon yourself, and dispose it when you're finished.

Answer 4

Garbage collector would eventually go and call Dispose for all the objects (assuming they are implemented according to IDisposable guidelines) but as a best practice you should be doing that always yourself. It is just a best practice and it will also enable you to detect potentially problematic areas (for example, a large Image being held in memory for too long - since you will dispose it manually, your application will throw an exception if it tries to use it where you did not intend it).

using (var icon = new Icon(...))
using (var contextMenu = new ContextMenu(...))
using (var contextMenuButton1 = new MenuItem(...))
using (var contextMenuButton2 = new MenuItem(...))
using (var contextMenuButton3 = new MenuItem(...))
{
    // ...
}

this.notifyIcon = new NotifyIcon(...);

Since you are storing (I assume that in this code sample) the this.notifyIcon value, your class also has to implement IDisposable and call this.notifyIcon.Dispose() there.

Edit: For those comments that say the GC will not call Dispose() - the standard pattern for implementing IDisposable is to implement a destructor that calls this.Dispose() - since GC does invoke the destructor/finalizer it will indirectly also invoke Dispose(). http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244737.aspx