3.30. Releasing a COM Object ThroughManaged Code
Problem
You need to release a COM object from managed code without forcing a garbage collection to occur.
Solution
Use the static
ReleaseComObject
method of the
Marshal
class:
int newRefCount = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(COMObj
);
where COMObj
is a reference to the runtime
callable wrapper (RCW) of a COM object.
Discussion
If the COM object is holding on to resources that need to be released
in a timely manner, we will want to decrement the reference count on
the COM object as quickly as possible, once we’ve
finished using the COM object and have set it to
null
. The GC needs to run in order to collect the
unreferenced RCW around our COM object, thereby decrementing the
reference count on the COM object. Unfortunately, there is no
guarantee that the GC will run in order to collect the RCW anytime in
the near future.
To solve this problem, we could call GC.Collect
ourselves to try to free the RCW, but this might be overkill.
Instead, use the ReleaseComObject
method to
manually force the RCW to decrement its reference count on the COM
object without having to force a collection to occur.
The static ReleaseComObject
method returns an
int
indicating the current reference count contained in the RCW object after this method has finished decrementing its reference count. Remember that this method decrements the reference count contained in the RCW, not the COM object’s reference count. When the RCW reference count goes ...
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