Spine won't run after hiatus, upgrade

sez

I used Spine last year, it worked just fine. Here's a blog post for the curious, about my efforts with Spine: http://indiegamecodingconfessions.blogs ... spine.html

Now it won't run. When I tried to run it after the break, I got a message saying I needed to download a new installer, which I did. I ran it and got this issue. I tried deleting the whole app, and all the files I could find under ~/Library and running again - it seemed to work, but it was late at night at that point. When I opened up my machine the next day the problem occurred again. Reinstalling does not fix the issue.

I have a MacOSX 10.9.2 VM running under VMWare, and tried running in there - it runs just fine.

Symptoms:

1) Launch Spine from double-click of .app - launch dialog appears

2) Launch dialog disappears, "Spine" appears in menu bar, spinning colour wheel of death

3) Nothing useful in log file

Mac OS X x86_64 10.9.2
Java 1.7.0_51 Oracle Corporation
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM
Launching: 1.8.32
Licensed to: Sarah Smith, <removed>
Spine 1.8.32 Professional, JGLFW
NVIDIA Corporation
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M OpenGL Engine
2.1 NVIDIA-8.24.9 310.40.25f01
Started.

4) Attaching to process "java" with Instruments shows that process constantly calling stat64 a directory: "/Applications/Spine/examples/spineboy/images"

I couldn't find anything else useful with the other instruments.

My config:
MacBook Pro, 10.9.2

Nate

Sorry you are having trouble. 🙁 I haven't seen this before. What is the launcher version reported in the log file? Does Console.app show anything useful after it fails to run? Are you able to run the trial? Is it possible for you to update your video card drivers?

sez

Yes, its weird. Spine has run fine for me for quite a while - now this.

~ sez$ cat "/Users/sez/Library//Application Support/Spine/spine.log"
Spine Launcher 1.8.16-full
Mac OS X x86_64 10.9.2
Java 1.7.0_51 Oracle Corporation
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM
Up to date: 1.8.32
Licensed to:

Spine 1.8.32 Professional, JGLFW
NVIDIA Corporation
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M OpenGL Engine
2.1 NVIDIA-8.24.9 310.40.25f01
Started.

I set a marker in Console.app and found that the following couple of lines are generated after the lockup - it seems to be some time after the hang is detected:

10/05/2014 2:36:58.000 pm kernel[0] process java[745] caught causing excessive wakeups. Observed wakeups rate (per sec): 797; Maximum permitted wakeups rate (per sec): 150; Observation period: 300 seconds; Task lifetime number of wakeups: 45052
10/05/2014 2:36:58.369 pm ReportCrash[756] Invoking spindump for pid=745 wakeups_rate=797 duration=57 because of excessive wakeups
10/05/2014 2:37:00.560 pm spindump[757] Saved wakeups_resource.spin report for launcher-full version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/launcher-full_2014-05-10-143700_Sarahs-MacBook-Pro.wakeups_resource.spin

The "spindump" logs are huge, and I have put 2 of them on DropBox here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2zveezokcdlyon2/AACsSRUHGaC0jO5y9_xXTkUQa - I had a look at them and couldn't see much useful. Basically it looks like the main app run loop starts up, a largish collection of threads is created, and then nothing. I'm not a Java person though. :-)

One other thing: IIRC there was a second app that used to get created at /Applications/Spine/Spine (System Java).app or similar. That is not there in my install. I wonder if somehow the install is getting corrupted. I'll try the trial and see if that is any different.

At present my work-around is to use my Windows 8 install (which runs under VMWare) and that has acceptable performance with Spine editor. Its a bit painful with the animation workflow but the shared drive is making it bearable.

I'd love to get it work again under Mac.

Nate

Unfortunately those dumps are only the native side, they stop at where Java is used. This means I can't see where in Spine things are happening. Googling "excessive wakeups", seems many people have this problem in OS X 10.9.2 with all sorts of apps, Flash, Photoshop, etc. Not sure if that is a coincidence or if there is something I can do. 🙁

"Spine (System Java).app" is gone, the Java that comes with Spine is used. You can try running with the system Java (you will need Java 7+):

export SPINE_JAVA=java
open Spine.app

Checking if the trial works could help.

sez

Solved. Executive summary: problem caused by Sun Java runtime. Fix that worked for me - run Spine by

cd /Applications/Spine
export SPINE_JAVA="/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/bin/java"
open Spine.app

I had sometime late last year installed the Java runtime "Java SE 7u55" as a browser plugin. IIRC I was looking at some sort of game dev tutorial content that used a Java plugin to display, and it would not display using whatever Chrome had by default. I tried Safari and it popped a dialog inviting me to install the 64bit Java SE 7 runtime - which worked for this web content. That plugin was (it turns out) installed in "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin" and inside there a java binary was under "Contents/Home/bin/java". The download is available from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/ ... index.html

Tip: To find if you have this installed, check System Preferences > Java - if there is no "Java" item in System Preferences then you don't have it. You can also find Sun Java products installed by opening Terminal and typing

pkgutil 

---

pkgs | grep oracle

# Java SE runtime is installed
com.oracle.jre

How to find where the java binary is inside the runtime - "System Preferences > Java > (on control panel) Java (tab) > View..." and check the Path setting. See screenshot. This will give you the full path to paste in the export command above.

Note that installed the JRE will not add java to your path, so typing java -version in the terminal will not reveal this. Installing the Java SDK will result in a new java.

Guesses: Somehow running the JRE must have created some state persisted somewhere on the local machine that was interacting with processes run via the Java runtime shipped with Spine. Since Spine now ships with its own Java, maybe a system java cache, preferences file, or library setting or similar, was causing problems when Spine's runtime tried to execute.

I also tried installing the full Sun JDK. Spine also runs fine under that but of course its a lot bigger. To use this fix for that, if you have full Sun java installed:

~ sez$  pkgutil 

---

pkgs | grep oracle

# Full java is installed
com.oracle.jdk7u55

# Java interpreter is now in path
~ sez$  java -version
java version "1.7.0_55"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_55-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.55-b03, mixed mode)

# run Spine with full java
export SPINE_JAVA="java"
open /Applications/Spine/Spine.app

Alternatively uninstalling the JRE might also work. I have not tried this.

Since running Spine from the command line all the time is kind of a pain, modifying the launcher script makes that hack permanent:

sudo vi /Applications/Spine/Spine.app/Contents/MacOS/run.sh

Edit it by adding the export line as shown. HTH.

Nate

Great detective skills, glad you got it solved! Sorry it was such a pain. 🙁 Spine comes with its own version of Java to avoid problems with not having Java, having the wrong or broken Java, etc. I'm not sure what configuration on your computer might cause problems with Spine's Java, It really should be self contained, but then it's a complicated beast. At any rate, glad it is working for you now! 🙂