The MSDN documentation for the CCmdTarget::OnFinalRelease method is pretty brief:
Called by the framework when the last OLE reference to or from the object is released.
I have created a sub-class of CCmdTarget
class CMyEventHandler : public CCmdTarget { ... }
I'm trying to figure out under what conditions the OnFinalRelease method will be called. I have some code that looks something like this:
CMyEventHandler* myEventHandler = new CMyEventHandler();
LPUNKNOWN pUnk = myEventHandler->GetIDispatch(FALSE);
AfxConnectionAdvise(myEventSource, DIID_IMyEventInterface, pUnk, FALSE, myCookie);
// Application continues...events arrive...eventually the event sink is shutdown
LPUNKNOWN pUnk = myEventHandler->GetIDispatch(FALSE);
AfxConnectionUnadvise(myEventSource, DIID_IMyEventInterface, pUnk, FALSE, myCookie);
Using this code, I observe that the OnFinalRelease method is never called. This means I have a memory leak. So I modified the wrap-up code as follows:
LPUNKNOWN pUnk = myEventHandler->GetIDispatch(FALSE);
AfxConnectionUnadvise(myEventSource, DIID_IMyEventInterface, pUnk, FALSE, myCookie);
delete myEventHandler;
myEventHandler = NULL;
This section of code is triggered off periodically throughout the day. What I notice now is that, while the destructor for the wrapped up instance of myEventHandler is called as expected, the OnFinalRelease function is getting called now! What's worse, it is being called not on the instance that has been wrapped up, but instead on a newly created instance of CMyEventHandler! Thinking that this might be due to a reference counting issue, I modified my wire-up and wrap-up code:
CMyEventHandler* myEventHandler = new CMyEventHandler();
LPUNKNOWN pUnk = myEventHandler->GetIDispatch(TRUE);
AfxConnectionAdvise(myEventSource, DIID_IMyEventInterface, pUnk, TRUE, myCookie);
pUnk->Release();
// Application continues...events arrive...eventually the event sink is shutdown
LPUNKNOWN pUnk = myEventHandler->GetIDispatch(TRUE);
AfxConnectionUnadvise(myEventSource, DIID_IMyEventInterface, pUnk, TRUE, myCookie);
pUnk->Release();
delete myEventHandler;
myEventHandler = NULL;
I let this run all day and now observe that OnFinalRelease is never called. The destructor for the wrapped up instance is called as I would expect, but I'm left feeling uneasy as I clearly don't understand the circumstances under which OnFinalRelease is called. Is OnFinalRelease called on some delay, or is there a way to force it to fire? What will trigger OnFinalRelease to be called?
If it matters, the event source is a .NET assembly exposing events via COM interop.
It doesn't appear that you ever call
myEventHandler->Release()
. Therefore, the last reference is never released, andOnFinalRelease
is never called.With COM you should always use the CoCreateInstance() AddRef() and Release() paradigm to manage lifetime of your objects, and let COM do the destruction of your objects based on reference counts. Avoid new and delete because using them breaks this paradigm and causes interesting side effects. You probably have a bug in the management of the reference counts.
The way to debug why the reference counts are not being managed correctly is to override CCmdTarget::InternalRelease() copy the source from oleunk.cpp and put some trace output or break points.
There are lots of times when passing IDispatch interfaces that code will bump reference counts and you have to decrement the reference count using Release(). Pay attention to where your code may be passing this interface because there is aconvention in COM that when Interfaces are passed using [in] or [out] where the caller or callee has to release the interface.
When the reference count issue is corrected you shoudl see the objects OnFinalRelease code being called and the object destoryed by hte MFC framework:
For CCmdTarget the destruction should happen as a result of the final release in the parent class CWnd:
FYI: Passing interfaces across threads without marshalling the interface pointers is another common reason to get errors in COM.