How do I reclaim memory from sprites after removing them?

[timhei]

I was going to just reply to this post, but I decided to post a bug report instead. It seems like removeAll() and removeSprites(array) might be bugged. If you use sprite:remove() instead, I think the issue doesn't happen.

for k, v in pairs(testSprites) do
    v:remove()
end

Major memory leak with removeSprites(array) and sprite.removeAll()

I am using the Windows Simulator, I'm not sure if this is a problem on both simulator and device. I was messing with a sprite benchmark @GloryFish posted on the Discord (Discord), and I noticed the performance would drop significantly after going up to 128x128 sprites and then back down to 5x5 sprites a few times (going to 512x512 crashes every time, probably overloading the stack or something). Even though gfx.sprite.spriteCount() indicates that the sprites have been removed from the display …