Different Behavior Between Debug and Release Builds - objective-c

Question

I'm using the SOCKit library to implement a URL router for my app. I have a custom Router class that keeps track of all the valid routes and implements a match method that, given a route NSString, matches it to a corresponding view controller. To make things easier, the matchable view controllers must implement the Routable protocol, which requires an initWithState: method that takes an NSDictionary as a parameter. Here's the relevant code:
- (id)match:(NSString *)route
{
for (NSArray *match in routePatterns) {
const SOCPattern * const pattern = [match objectAtIndex:kPatternIndex];
if ([pattern stringMatches:route]) {
Class class = [match objectAtIndex:kObjectIndex];
NSLog(#"[pattern parameterDictionaryFromSourceString:route]: %#", [pattern parameterDictionaryFromSourceString:route]);
UIViewController<Routable> *vc;
vc = [[class alloc] initWithState:[pattern parameterDictionaryFromSourceString:route]];
return vc;
}
}
return nil;
}
When I run the app with the debug configuration, [pattern parameterDictionaryFromSourceString:route] produces what is expected:
[pattern parameterDictionaryFromSourceString:route]: {
uuid = "e9ed6708-5ad5-11e1-91ca-12313810b404";
}
On the other hand, when I run the app with the release configuration, [pattern parameterDictionaryFromSourceString:route] produces an empty dictionary. I'm really not sure how to debug this. I've checked my own code to see if there are any obvious differences between the debug and release builds to no avail and have also looked at the SOCKit source code. Ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

I just ran into this issue myself today. The issue in my case was that Release builds blocked assertions, but in -performSelector:onObject:sourceString: and -parameterDictionaryFromSourceString: is this important line:
NSAssert([self gatherParameterValues:&values fromString:sourceString],
#"The pattern can't be used with this string.");
Which, when assertions are converted to no-ops, vanishes, and the gathering never happens. With no parameter values, not much happens! I changed it to the following (and will submit an issue to the GitHub repo):
if( ![self gatherParameterValues:&values fromString:sourceString] ) {
NSAssert(NO, #"The pattern can't be used with this string.");
return nil;
}
EDIT: reported as issue #13.