Zombie Object Detector

Scripts to detect and diagnose zombie objects.

Description of Zombie Objects

The best description of what we mean by a "zombie" object is in a 2014 blog post here https://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/16/custom-operator-should-we-keep-it/. Specifically the paragraph labelled "purpose two".

To recap: Many C# classes in the UnityEngine namespace act as wrappers to instances of corresponding C++ classes, which hold the actual data. The class UnityEngine.GameObject is an example. Zombie objects are instances of these C# classes that have outlived their C++ counterpart. The C++ instances are destroyed in an entirely deterministic fashion, for example on scene transition. On the other hand the C# instances are garbage collected just like any other C# object. This means that there is an opportunity for the C# object to remain in existence by being referenced by other objects, static variables, etc.

How this tool determines Zombie Objects

The tool attempts to traverse every instance of every class. From any one object, it uses reflection to obtain every field of that object, and simply recurses into each one. It does this until it has examined every object in memory.

An object is considered a zombie if it satisfies all of the following criteria:

• It is not actually null.
• It is a subclass of UnityEngine.Object.
• When you compare it to null using (obj as UnityEngine.Object) == null, it returns true.

Installation

• Install the package using the Unity Package Manager window, using Add Package from Git URL.

This repository contains an example project that contains various examples of Zombie objects. These examples are simple and easy to fix. In larger projects this is not always the case. This tool will help you find them, and give you a trace of where and what is keeping them alive.

Credits

The project was started by Stewart McCready (@StewMcc) during his internship at Unity, with subsequent work by Peter Pimley (@peter-pimley-unity).