Does View.removeAllViews() release memory?

Question

I experienced OutOfMemory exception in my code, so I am reviewing the code.

I have a question, does View.removeAllViews() release the memory that were used by the child views that were previously added into this the parent view?

Thanks.

Answer 1

View.removeAllViews() might release the Views, and will schedule them for garbage collection (which could occur later) however you might still have a problem because @drawables in the XML or in your code with 'getDrawable()' could still consume memory.

I have struggled with OutOfMemory errors a lot myself and found that the biggest issue was not the Layout XML or the View objects, but the Drawables and Resources that they loaded (or I loaded to attach to them.)

A great talk on this can be found on YouTube from Google IO 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CruQY55HOk

This talk introduces using the Eclipse MAT (Memory Analysis Tool) to troubleshoot OutOfMemory exceptions. I suggest it because you mention you're reviewing code and the best place to start looking for an OutOfMemory error is ... "what is taking up my memory?"

Answer 2

Except if your code has references on the ViewGroup's child views, all ViewGroup's child views should be "garbage collectable".