Why doesn't removing the last scene in cocosd2d-x trigger the scenes destructor?

Question

I've added a Player* _player pointer to my HelloWorldScene scene in cocos2d-x v.2.2.2. I've defined class Player : public cocos2d::Object, so it's referenced counted. My create method for HelloWorldScene looks like this

Scene* HelloWorldScene::createScene(Player* player)
{
  auto scene = Scene::create();
  auto layer = HelloWorldScene::create();
  layer->_player = player;
  player->retain();
  scene->addChild(layer);
  return scene;
}

where player is instantiated in AppDelegate::applicationDidFinishLaunching(). Now, since I've retained _player (and I feel like a nice guy today), I've decided to release it as well:

HelloWorldScene::~HelloWorldScene()
{
  if (_player)
  {
    _player->release();
  }
}

So far so good. However, when HelloWorldScene is popped, the following is called

void Director::popScene(void)
{
  CCASSERT(_runningScene != nullptr, "running scene should not null");

  _scenesStack.popBack();
  ssize_t c = _scenesStack.size();

  if (c == 0)
  {
    end();
  }
  else
  {
    _sendCleanupToScene = true;
    _nextScene = _scenesStack.at(c - 1);
  }
}

So, whenever HelloWorldScene is the last scene in the stack, it won't get destroyed? (At least that's what it seems like from XCode.)

I'm not a C++ grandmaster, so forgive my ignorance. Yet, to me, this is quite unexpected behavior. Shouldn't the popped scene be cleaned up before program termination (by letting _sendCleanupToScene = true and having it run one more iteration)?

Clearly, I'm missing something ... If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd be thrilled! :)

Answer 1

So the premise of my question was wrong - I somehow got the idea that everything had to be released at program termination. But, as I re-learned yesterday, the OS will of course reclaim the allocated memory once the program terminates. Thus making releasing the last scene in the stack unnecessary.