I am struggling to determine what is holding on to objects that I am removing from the view hierarchy and setting to nil (and to the best of my knowledge setting all delegates to nil and removing all notifications) using Instruments Allocations and/or Leaks.
I have the option "Record Reference Counts" enabled, but I do not see where that information is presented. There is no RefCt column in my view (see attached image). How do I make it appear? I am using Xcode Version 8.0 (8A218a).
Is there anyway to analyze what objects are retaining sub-objects?
Use the Xcode visual memory debugger. It's covered in this keynote.