No, you don't need to remove $$watchers, since they will effectively get removed once the scope is destroyed.
From Angular's source code (v1.2.21), Scope's $destroy method:
$destroy: function() {
...
if (parent.$$childHead == this) parent.$$childHead = this.$$nextSibling;
if (parent.$$childTail == this) parent.$$childTail = this.$$prevSibling;
if (this.$$prevSibling) this.$$prevSibling.$$nextSibling = this.$$nextSibling;
if (this.$$nextSibling) this.$$nextSibling.$$prevSibling = this.$$prevSibling;
...
this.$$watchers = this.$$asyncQueue = this.$$postDigestQueue = [];
...
So, the $$watchers array is emptied (and the scope is removed from the scope hierarchy).
Removing the watcher from the array is all the unregister function does anyway:
$watch: function(watchExp, listener, objectEquality) {
...
return function deregisterWatch() {
arrayRemove(array, watcher);
lastDirtyWatch = null;
};
}
So, there is no point in unregistering the $$watchers "manually".
You should still unregister event listeners though (as you correctly mention in your post) !
NOTE:
You only need to unregister listeners registered on other scopes. There is no need to unregister listeners registered on the scope that is being destroyed.
E.g.:
// You MUST unregister these
$rootScope.$on(...);
$scope.$parent.$on(...);
// You DON'T HAVE to unregister this
$scope.$on(...)
(Thx to @John for pointing it out)
Also, make sure you unregister any event listeners from elements that outlive the scope being destroyed. E.g. if you have a directive register a listener on the parent node or on <body>, then you must unregister them too.
Again, you don't have to remove a listener registered on the element being destroyed.
Kind of unrelated to the original question, but now there is also a $destroyed event dispatched on the element being destroyed, so you can hook into that as well (if it's appropriate for your usecase):
link: function postLink(scope, elem) {
doStuff();
elem.on('$destroy', cleanUp);
}
