MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks leaks activities

[mindhacker42]

Library version: 5.1.0

LeakCanary trace:

In xxxxxxx.simpledemo:1.0:1.
* it.reveel.simpledemo.MainActivity has leaked:
* GC ROOT static it.reveel.sdk.internal.analytics.Analytics.mixpanelApi
* references com.mixpanel.android.mpmetrics.MixpanelAPI.mMixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks
* references com.mixpanel.android.mpmetrics.MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks.check
* references com.mixpanel.android.mpmetrics.MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks$1.val$activity (anonymous implementation of java.lang.Runnable)
* leaks xxxxxxx.simpledemo.MainActivity instance

* Retaining: 148 KB.
* Reference Key: 63546fe7-d0af-4992-a355-ca5a90e2ee4c
* Device: LGE google Nexus 5 hammerhead
* Android Version: 6.0.1 API: 23 LeakCanary: 1.5 00f37f5
* Durations: watch=5064ms, gc=130ms, heap dump=4808ms, analysis=236627ms

I looked at the code and I saw that you register for activity lifecycle callbacks to measure session duration and other stuff. You can disable other stuff but you can't disable measuring session duration.
Problem occurs when you capture activity object in Runnable and you retain that in variable and since MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks lives forever in MixpanelAPI singleton that Runnable never gets GCed.

1. It might help to unregister for lifecycle events in onResume or somewhere since you don't need to listen for that in background.
2. Otherwise maybe putting "check" variable to null when removing callbacks from handler will also help.

[mindhacker42]

After investigating further I saw that library version 5.0.2 does not leak. Problem is in 5.1.0 in the line 81 of MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks.
Because you use activity passed in onActivityPaused method to get application context you capture activity instance in Runnable named check.

You could get minimumSessionDuration and sessionTimeoutDuration variables in MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks constructor or at least use context from an instance variable or MixpanelAPI instance.

[mwolfe38]

I'm seeing this as well. It's causing some major memory leaks in my app. Any progress on a fix?

[JasonSznol]

+1 on this leak.

[patedit]

Thanks a lot for reporting this @mindhacker42 and thanks @mwolfe38 @JasonSznol for confirming the issue!
I've fixed the problem (3662663) and released version 5.1.2 just now 👍

[JasonSznol]

Have you published the updated version to a maven repository? Gradle is saying it can't be found and I did not see it in bintray last night.

[patedit]

@JasonSznol Can you try now? Thanks!

[JasonSznol]

Can confirm it is working, thanks!

[patedit]

Amazing. Thanks for your help @JasonSznol !

[fleficher]

Hi @patedit i'm having the same issue using the 5.2.1 version :

`* xxxxxxx.MyActivity has leaked:

• GC ROOT static A4S.b
• references xxxxxxx.MyApplication.mMixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks
• references ArrayList.elementData
• references array Object[].[14]
• references MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks.mCheck
• references MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks$1.val$activity (anonymous implementation of java.lang.Runnable)
• leaks xxxxxxx.MyActivity instance
  `

[fleficher]

Oups, sorry @patedit, we had a class named 'MixpanelActivityLifecycleCallbacks' in our code too which is extremly closed to yours. So it was a problem on my side :)

Wrong alert