I've installed Spine 4 beta next to Spine 3.x (pro). After installing v4-beta with the new installer, v3 asks for a validation code, even though that was already known and wasn't needed before.

No problem when this only happens once, but it seems like every time Spine 4-beta checks for updates, the Spine 3 installation asks for the validation code again. That's obviously not really convenient.

Would be nice if we could just run both a new beta and a stable version together without affecting eachother for obvious reasons. Could this be changed or is there a workaround for this?

info
Spine 3 (3.8.99 pro) uses launcher v3.8.99
Spine 4 (4.0.20-beta-pro) uses launcher v4.0.11

Nate ha scritto

Is there a reason that you want to use the v3 launcher?

v3 launcher was already present as v3 was installed with it. Never got a question by Spine to update the launcher.
v4 launcher was installed because I asked you if it was possible to run v4-beta in parallel without affecting v3 and its config. And what I got from your anwer was that it was possible to install in parallel, because there are two different launchers not affecting each other. But maybe I misunderstood?

If there's a way to install both the stable v3 and the beta v4 in parallel on the same machine, completely seperated without conflicts and with each program using their own settings, with the v4 launcher, I'm happy to switch to the v4 launcher.
Is that possible?

Nate ha scritto

Long story short, while you can install both launchers at the same time, there is no reason to continue using the v3 launcher. The v4 launcher does everything the v3 launcher does, but does many of them better, plus it can run v4 versions.

Sounds good, so I just removed the old v3 launcher and installed the v4 to a seperate folder for the v3-spine instead, so I have installed two v4 launchers. But now it has unexpected results.

At fist I got this error and the new launcher wouldn't start:

'An unexpected error has occurred'

log

Spine Launcher 4.0.11
Esoteric Software LLC (C) 2013-2020 | http://esotericsoftware.com
Windows 10 Home amd64 10.0
NVIDIA Corporation, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti/PCIe/SSE2, 4.6.0 NVIDIA 456.38
Launching: Spine 3.8.99 Professional
ERROR: Error running legacy Spine launcher:
Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Xmx512M
Spine Launcher 4.0.11-legacy

And now it doesn't matter which of both v4 launchers I run, both run the same Spine version. :upsidedown:

You gave me the impression I could install the v4 launcher double in parallel where one starts v3.x and the other starts v4.x and that I could have seperate and completely individual settings per launcher. But that doesn't seem to work and throws issues. So I am dissapointed.

Unfortunately this is taking me longer than I wanted and I have other things to do. I'm at the point of leaving the beta-version and re-install v3, even though I'd rather install both the v3-spine-stable and the v4-spine-beta to also learn the v4-spine-beta changes in the meantime. But if not possible I only want the stable v3 version installed. If I knew upfront it would be problematic to install both I would have never installed the beta.

I try one last time to ask my question and to be sure we don't have a misunderstanding here:
Are you sure both two v4-launchers can be installed in parallel on the same machine, while launcher A always starts v3-stable and the other v4-beta, while both launchers (or launched Spine versions for that matter) have their own individual settings stored, so there's no conflict?

If not possible no problem, than I just skip (uninstall) the v4-beta and return to v3-stable only. If it is possible though, that would be nice. But please, could you tell me how to do it without issues as described above?

BTW Affinity has a nice system for this; their betas are completely seperated from their stable versions so can be installed at the same time each with their own settings, folders etc.. That way more people start using the beta version as it is always safe to install and has no effect on the stable version. I thought Spine was doing the same, but that doesn't seem the case. Would be great if Spine would though as now it's holding me back to install beta versions to be honest.

I appreciate you guys on being on this forum to help people btw as you're probably very busy creating v4 at the moment. So thanks for your reactions. If not possible to install both, no problem. Than I just uninstall the beta and continue using the stable version. Perhaps I can install the v4-beta only on a different computer than.

Anyway,

Thanks in advance!

Nate ha scritto

Hopefully that gets you back on track!

Thanks for the extensive answer.

The command line options are great! I have uninstalled everything Spine first. Needed to remove an uninstall 'Product'-key-folder from the registry though, because for some reason before the v3-launcher uninstaller was executed and uninstalled v3 from disc, but left keys in the registry causing Windows to think it was still installed. Are removing this 'key-folder' from registry Windows 'Add and Remove Programs' directly updated the list of installed programs and it was then gone as expected.

Then installed just one v4.0.12 launcher and created two shortcuts in the taskbar both using the command line parameter -u, one which starts the latest-stable and the other one starts the latest-beta. Both now have seem to have their own settings and it looks like they can run at the same time even. Don't spotted issues so far.

So great! Looks like it's working now. Thanks again!