How to change runtime to spine 4.3-beta?

[arywindows]

Hi is there anyway to change the runtime version to spine 4.3-beta?

Thank you for the answer

[britzl]

You can fork the extension and add the 4.3 beta libraries, headers etc and hope it works. It was a bit hard to say from the change log, there are a lot of changes: https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-changelog/archive#v4-3-00-beta

[arywindows]

Hi Spine just released the stable 4.3, can we get this running on defold ?

https://esotericsoftware.com/forum/d/30212-spine-43-released

Thank you

[britzl]

I expect this to require quite a bit of work.

https://esotericsoftware.com/blog/Spine-4.3-released

Spine 4.3 includes a major refactor of our native runtime stack, letting us support more languages with even higher quality. spine-cpp is now the shared implementation for every C-family runtime we ship, while spine-c, spine-ios / SpineSwift, and spine-flutter have all been rewritten as auto-generated wrappers on top of it.

spine-cpp has been expanded to support this new stack. Headers moved from spine-cpp/spine-cpp/include/spine/ to spine-cpp/include/spine/, and the public API was reshaped around the 4.3 model: split bone pose and applied pose, Pose / Posed / PosedActive base classes, a unified constraint timeline hierarchy, the new Sequence model, convex and inverse clipping, additive blending instead of holdPrevious, sliders, and more. It also gained a lightweight RTTI system, which allows us to generate idiomatic bindings in other languages.

spine-c has been completely rewritten as an auto-generated C wrapper around spine-cpp. The old hand-maintained sp* API is gone. The new API uses opaque spine_xxx handles, exposes the full C++ type hierarchy through generated cast functions, includes nullability hints (/@null/) and Doxygen-style docs in the generated headers, and reaches full feature parity with C++. This is a breaking change for spine-c users. The new API and documentation live at esotericsoftware.com/spine-c.

Our version of the extension is built around spine-c and I fear that a lot will break now that it's auto generated....

Perhaps someone can throw an LLM at it and see if it manages to auto-migrate to the new spine-c API?

[AGulev]

Here is an experimental branch. I can’t estimate when it will be finished and merged, but it works https://github.com/defold/extension-spine/tree/spine-4.3

[arywindows]

Hi is there any detailed documentation of how to build the extension?

I've tried building the extension with bob.jar 1.12.4 and 1.13.0, but i keep encountering this error:

Using BOB=bob.jar
Using DEFOLDSDK=f735c12192bf95684e6ae1ae27c400b8170fc6d8
Using SERVER=https://build-stage.defold.com
Using VARIANT=headless
Building x86_64-macos arm64-macos x86_64-linux arm64-linux x86_64-win32

Build platform=x86_64-macos platform_ne=x86_64-osx
There are some problems with the libraries, using the resolve command to fetch them might help.
- Missing library https://github.com/defold/extension-automation-bridge/archive/refs/heads/improvements.zip
 50% Working
 50% Reading classes
WARNING: A restricted method in java.lang.System has been called
WARNING: java.lang.System::load has been called by com.dynamo.bob.pipeline.ModelImporterJni in an unnamed module (file:/home/_/git/extension-spine/bob.jar)
WARNING: Use --enable-native-access=ALL-UNNAMED to avoid a warning for callers in this module
WARNING: Restricted methods will be blocked in a future release unless native access is enabled

INFO    Set jna.library.path to '/home/_/git/extension-spine/build/plugins/defold-spine/plugins/lib/x86_64-linux' 
INFO    Set java.library.path to '/usr/java/packages/lib:/usr/lib64:/lib64:/lib:/usr/lib:/home/_/git/extension-spine/build/plugins/defold-spine/plugins/lib/x86_64-linux' 
INFO      build/plugins/defold-spine/plugins/share/pluginSpineExt.jar 
     
WARNING: A terminally deprecated method in sun.misc.Unsafe has been called
WARNING: sun.misc.Unsafe::arrayBaseOffset has been called by com.google.protobuf.UnsafeUtil (file:/home/_/git/extension-spine/bob.jar)
WARNING: Please consider reporting this to the maintainers of class com.google.protobuf.UnsafeUtil
WARNING: sun.misc.Unsafe::arrayBaseOffset will be removed in a future release

SEVERE  com/dynamo/bob/pipeline/IGuiCustomNode 
SEVERE  Cause:0: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/dynamo/bob/pipeline/IGuiCustomNode 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:962) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:144) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:454) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:367) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:557) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:490) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:547) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.doScan(Project.java:378) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.scan(Project.java:327) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.scanJavaClasses(Project.java:1319) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.doBuild(Project.java:1849) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.build(Project.java:709) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.invoke(Bob.java:988) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.main(Bob.java:1065) 
SEVERE  Cause:1: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.dynamo.bob.pipeline.IGuiCustomNode 
SEVERE  java.base/java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:377) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:557) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:490) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:962) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:144) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:454) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:367) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:557) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:490) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method) 
SEVERE  java.base/java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:547) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.doScan(Project.java:378) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.scan(Project.java:327) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.scanJavaClasses(Project.java:1319) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.doBuild(Project.java:1849) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.build(Project.java:709) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.invoke(Bob.java:988) 
SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.main(Bob.java:1065) 
SEVERE  com/dynamo/bob/pipeline/IGuiCustomNode 

I've also tried to run java -jar bob.jar resolve but then i encounter this error:

  0% Downloading 2 archives
  0% Downloading https://github.com/britzl/extension-imgui/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
  0% Downloading https://github.com/defold/extension-automation-bridge/archive/refs/heads/improvements.zip
WARNING: A restricted method in java.lang.System has been called
WARNING: java.lang.System::load has been called by com.dynamo.bob.pipeline.ModelImporterJni in an unnamed module (file:/home/_/git/extension-spine/bob.jar)
WARNING: Use --enable-native-access=ALL-UNNAMED to avoid a warning for callers in this module
WARNING: Restricted methods will be blocked in a future release unless native access is enabled

 25% Downloading https://github.com/britzl/extension-imgui/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
 50% Downloading https://github.com/britzl/extension-imgui/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
100% Downloading https://github.com/britzl/extension-imgui/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
2026-07-19 23:44:40 SEVERE  Failed to fetch library https://github.com/defold/extension-automation-bridge/archive/refs/heads/improvements.zip: HTTP 404 
2026-07-19 23:44:40 SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Project.resolveLibUrls(Project.java:2065) 
2026-07-19 23:44:40 SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.setupProject(Bob.java:678) 
2026-07-19 23:44:40 SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.invoke(Bob.java:858) 
2026-07-19 23:44:40 SEVERE  com.dynamo.bob.Bob.main(Bob.java:1065) 
2026-07-19 23:44:40 SEVERE  Failed to fetch library https://github.com/defold/extension-automation-bridge/archive/refs/heads/improvements.zip: HTTP 404 

[AGulev]

It requires defold 1.13.1 + (beta or alpha for now)

[AGulev]

use https://github.com/defold/extension-spine/archive/refs/heads/spine-4.3.zip link in dependencies

…

On 20 Jul 2026, at 08:36, arywindows ***@***.***> wrote: arywindows left a comment (defold/extension-spine#272) <#272 (comment)> Thank you, the build now is succesful. But now i'm confused with how to add it to the dependencies on game.project. Where should i add the build result to the game.project? I've tried to add the git directory to include dirs in game project, but it's not succesfull — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#272?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAQ3OPHS7NGBLN2PN2TQFH35FW4X5A5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTKMBRHE2DIMRVHE22M4TFMFZW63VHMNXW23LFNZ2KKZLWMVXHJLDGN5XXIZLSL5RWY2LDNM#issuecomment-5019442595>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAQ3OPGGZDSC4UK232DB7Y35FW4X5AVCNFSNUABFKJSXA33TNF2G64TZHMZTKMZSGQ4TAMBWHNEXG43VMU5TIMZWGQ4DSNJSGIYKC5QC>. You are receiving this because you commented.

[arywindows]

thank you, i've solved it with adding the git root dir to a subdirectory in game.project > library > include dirs