Improving error message for version mismatches

chromokun

Just a small bug report / feature request. I just updated from 4.2 to 4.3 and it went pretty smoothly, but I had a few unused 4.2 skeletons we missed. Whenever I switched build profiles I'd get a dialog box from SkeletonDataCompatibility.DisplayCompatibilityProblem telling me there was an issue, but it didn't tell me WHICH skeleton had that issue. I see in the code the name is logged, but I never saw the logs, even when looking for them. Maybe Unity cleared the console right after finishing asset importing.

I hacked in my own fix, so I'm fine, but it might be nice to include the skeleton name or path to the asset in the message that appears in the dialog box so it's easier for others to fix in the future.

Harald

@chromokun Thanks for bringing this to our attention! While the dialog was intended to be shown only once for multiple failing imported skeletons, it is indeed improved a lot by showing at least one problematic skeleton name still.

We've just pushed a commit which adds this info and also briefly pings the Asset in the Project window.
A new spine-unity 4.3 unitypackage is available:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity-download

chromokun I see in the code the name is logged, but I never saw the logs, even when looking for them. Maybe Unity cleared the console right after finishing asset importing.

That's strange indeed. Colsole window Clear should happen only after Play, Build or Recompile, perhaps recompilation was triggered after your error messages have been displayed. While you could open the Editor Log via the triple-dot button of the Console window, that still loses the benefit of the click-to-highlight the respective asset in the Project window. I assume you did not accidentally just disable the error portion in the Log window, right?

Spinebot

That's a great point! The error dialog from SkeletonDataCompatibility.DisplayCompatibilityProblem showing a version mismatch without identifying which skeleton is causing the problem can definitely make troubleshooting harder, especially when you have a large project with many skeletons and only a few were left on an older version.

Your suggestion to include the skeleton name or asset path directly in the dialog message makes a lot of sense — the name is already being logged to the console, so surfacing it in the dialog itself would make it immediately actionable without having to hunt through logs that may have already been cleared by the import process.

Glad you were able to work around it with your own fix! This kind of feedback is really helpful for improving the developer experience in spine-unity. Thanks for taking the time to share it.

chromokun

Thanks! That's awesome!

As for the logs, I just did a very quick test (so take it with a huge grain of salt), but it does seem like all Spine logs are getting cleared when I change build profiles. I have "Clear on Build" And "Clear on recompile" checked. If I turn those off and switch build profiles, then I do see logs from Spine.

So I'm guessing when I switch build profiles Spine imports the assets, gives me lots of useful logs messages, then Unity compiles my project and clears them all before I can see them.

(Edit: This is with Unity 6.4.12f1)

Harald

chromokun So I'm guessing when I switch build profiles Spine imports the assets, gives me lots of useful logs messages, then Unity compiles my project and clears them all before I can see them.

Ah, thanks for the additional info, that indeed helps a lot in reproducing that phenomenon! We will have a look at what we can do to still display the error messages accordingly.

Harald

@chromokun Unfortuntely a workaround would add more complexity than we are happy to introduce.

If multiple skeletons are causing errors, the simplest and quickest solution is to selectively rightclick on any problematic folder and select Reimport, or Reimport All to gather all problematic skeletons in one go. I hope that this also works as a good solution if you encounter issues in the future, together with the single logged skeleton name in the adjusted dialog window.

chromokun

Absolutely makes sense, thanks for taking a look!