How can I determine if a compiled Objective-C app is using garbage collection?

Question

For any application that I have on my Mac, is there a way to tell if it was compiled with GC enabled, or if it\'s doing manual memory management?

Answer 1

Within the mach-o is a flag used to determine if a binary compiled with GC support, for non-GC, or mixed mode.

I don't know of anything that queries these bits via a more friendly API.

The markgc.c source within the Objective-C runtime can read said flags. You could refactor it to your needs, as desired.

Kind of curious why you need to know?