I'm call a .net 4.0 dll from a vb6 app using com interop. In .net I create an xps document, via a xaml fixed document and save it to disk. This causes and memory leak and I've found a great solution here.
Saving a FixedDocument to an XPS file causes memory leak
The solution above, that worked for me, involves this line of code:
Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.SystemIdle, new DispatcherOperationCallback(delegate { return null; }), null);
What exactly is happening with this line of code. Is that by setting the delegate to null this disposes the Dispatcher object?
While it initially appears that the supplied code does nothing, it actually has a non-obvious side effect that is resolving your problem. Let's break it down into steps:
Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher
Gets the dispatcher for the current thread.
Invoke
synchronously executes the supplied delegate on the dispatcher's thread (the current one)
DispatcherPriority.SystemIdle
sets the execution priority
new DispatcherOperationCallback(delegate { return null; })
creates a delegate that does nothing
null
is passed as an argument to the delegate
All together, this looks like it does nothing, and indeed it actually does do "nothing". The important part is that it waits until the dispatcher for the current thread has cleared any scheduled tasks that are higher priority than SystemIdle
before doing the "nothing". This allows the scheduled cleanup work to happen before you return to your vb6 app.