removeChild crashes in certain circumstances

What steps will reproduce the problem?

This code sometimes (quite rarely but stable) crashes with EXC_BAD_ACCESS:

GDataXMLNode *child = [element.children objectAtIndex:0];
[element removeChild:child];

This happens because in removeChild: method, 'child' object gets deallocated 
(when [self releaseCachedValues] is called) before it's XMLNode is retrieved 
and removed from parent.

Initial method is:

- (void)removeChild:(GDataXMLNode *)child {
 // this is safe for attributes too
 if (xmlNode_ != NULL) {

   [self releaseCachedValues];  //<< here child refCount is set to 0 and sometimes it is removed instantly

   xmlNodePtr node = [child XMLNode];  //<< as child pointer is invalid, crash occurs here

   xmlUnlinkNode(node);

   // if the child node was borrowing its xmlNodePtr, then we need to
   // explicitly free it, since there is probably no owning object that will
   // free it on dealloc
   if (![child shouldFreeXMLNode]) {
     xmlFreeNode(node);
   }
 }
}

To avoid crash, the method should be modified as following:

- (void)removeChild:(GDataXMLNode *)child {
 // this is safe for attributes too
 if (xmlNode_ != NULL) {

   xmlNodePtr node = [child XMLNode];

   xmlUnlinkNode(node);

   // if the child node was borrowing its xmlNodePtr, then we need to
   // explicitly free it, since there is probably no owning object that will
   // free it on dealloc
   if (![child shouldFreeXMLNode]) {
     xmlFreeNode(node);
   }

   [self releaseCachedValues];   //<< we release child collection after we finished accessing 'child'
 }
}

Original issue reported on code.google.com by feedback.gm@gmail.com on 6 Jun 2012 at 1:44

moshangchen / gdata-objectivec-client

removeChild crashes in certain circumstances #143