I'm creating a simple single-window app for OS X on Yosemite, targeting Mavericks, implemented in Swift. My storyboard is based on the default project one, so there is no custom window controller, just a ViewController.swift. When I close the window, the instance of that view controller is not released (code in deinit never executes), despite the fact that I have "Release When Closed" checked for the NSWindow object in the storyboard.
Furthermore, if I open it again (using a "show" segue), it appears to be a new instance of the window, not the existing, unreleased one. The upshot is that if I open and close the window multiple times, new instances of the view controller are created for each new window, but of course never released on close. Seems silly for the app to continue eating memory for each window.
How do I get windows to actually release themselves and related controllers and views on close?
Update: I discovered that, although "Release When Closed" is checked in IB, it’s false in viewWillAppear(). If I set it to true there, when I close the window, then open it again, when I close it again, I get an EXC_BAD_ACCESS error that just points at my AppDelegate class. :-(
I just ran my app in the latest Xcode 6.2 beta, and the problem no longer exists there. Not sure I was remembering it properly, I ran the project in Xcode 6.1.1 and opening and closing the single window repeatedly continues to make the app grow in size.
So it looks like this is an issue that is fixed applications build by Xcode 6.2.