The iOS SDK uses the delegate pattern everywhere. Occasionally, you may want to create your own delegate protocol for some custom object. When doing so, keep in mind the subtleties of memory management. Always use @property (nonatomic, assign) rather than @property (nonatomic, retain) with delegates. It is often habit to use “retain,” but a delegate must use “assign.”
Consider the following scenario. When creating an object, its delegate is often set to “self.” Using retain as the setter policy will cause the object to retain itself. The problem is that objects (usually) don’t ever call release on delegates. Hypothetically, if a delegate is released, it’s likely to be done in -dealloc. Since the object retained itself, -dealloc will never be called. The result is a memory leak. Xcode’s static analyzer will not be able to catch this type of leak. One of the major pitfalls of reference counting is circular dependencies. The only solutions in iOS are to avoid such dependencies or force the cycle to be broken somewhere. The first option is highly preferred.
By using assign, we avoid a circular dependency. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t retain a delegate if needed. It just has to be done manually. For example: [self setDelegate:[aDelegate retain]];. This also means that the release must be done manually. Typically this can be done in -dealloc. Additionally, you may want to include a check for delegate != self. Sending [self release] in -dealloc will result in an infinite loop.
