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      Chao Huang

      PhD Student, CDRI, Zhejiang University, China

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Create Standalone Application from MATLAB for Newbies

12 Apr 2018

Reading time ~4 minutes

OS 1: MacOS High Sierra

OS 2: Linux, Ubuntu 16.0 on VirtualBox

MATLAB version: R2018a. To open in Linux Terminal, “~$ /home/chao/MATLAB/R2018a/bin/matlab”.

Introduction

With MATLAB, we can package MATLAB scripts (suffix: .m) into a standalone application (APP) to run on any computers without installing MATLAB. The APP can be run both as GUI or .sh file in command line. Below I’m going to show two methods to compile this APP: Create Standalone Application from MATLAB GUI and Create Standalone Application from Command line.

The official guides by MathWorks, Create Standalone Application from MATLAB GUI and Create Standalone Application from Command Line,are almost perfect. However, there are certainly some points to be clarified for newbies like me :honeybee:.

Method#1: Create Standalone Application from MATLAB GUI

MATLAB Compiler

This is an application (APP) named application compiler in MATLAB.

MATLAB runtime

MATLAB compiler runtime (MCR) contains all the libraries needed to run the standalone APP and thus is required to be installed by end-users without MATLAB. Therefore, MCR will be accompanied with the installer created in this guide.

Cross-platform is not allowed

We should create the standalone on the same type of operating system (OS) as the target OS to run it. For example, “To create a standalone which can run on a Linux system you would actually need to create the standalone using MATLAB + MATLAB Compiler for Linux on a Linux machine.” (from Mathworks Support).

matlabroot

It’s an object in MATLAB, representing the root directory (dir) of MATLAB. You can check it in Command Window of MATLAB: >> matlabroot, mine returns ans = '/Applications/MATLAB_R2018a.app'.

Before “enter magicsquare(5)”

Switch to dir of “magicsquare.m”, otherwise MATLAB can not call magicsqaure function. Go to Command Window of MATLAB: >> cd /Applications/MATLAB_R2018a.app/extern/examples/compiler.

Before “Package”

  1. Recommend to choose “Runtime downloaded from web”, thus the distribution file could be pretty small.
  2. Recommend: Additional installer options » Default installation folder:/usr/local. In this case, no root permission required.

Run the APP on Mac

Go to Terminal, change dir to where this APP is installed. If everything before was done as default, it should be cd /Applications/magicsquare. Before running export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=MCR_ROOT/v92/runtime/maci64:MCR_ROOT/v92/sys/os/maci64:MCR_ROOT/v92/bin/maci64, replace “MCR_ROOT/v92” with the path to where MCR is installed. For me, it is “/Applications/MATLAB/MATLAB_Runtime/v94”. “v92” stands for version 9.2, “v94” stands for version 9.4.

More tricks

(1) Sometimes running the APP in terminal just prompts errors which we believe should not happen. In this case, don't hesitate to uninstall the standalone application and delete the distribution files. Then restart your Mac and repeat the way from compiling the app to run it.

(2) Be sure that your MATLAB have installed the toolboxes required to run all the functions in the application. Otherwise, you will get errors when running the app, e.g. "Undefined function or variable 'wavedec3'". This function comes from "Wavelet Toolbox", so go to "MATLAB > Apps > Get more apps > (search) Wavelet Toolbox > install". Then repeat the way from compiling the app to run it.

(3) To build an APP on Linux, install VirtualBox, and install Ubuntu on it. Everything else is very similar, except that the way to run the APP was found different from the offical guide. Go to Terminal, switch to the installation dir, by default, `cd /usr/local/standalone_app_name`, run `./application/run_standalone_app_name.sh MCR_installation_dir [other_arguments_to_the_APP]`.
  -  MCR_installation_dir: No quotation mark. The default installation dir is “/usr/local/MATLAB/MATLAB_Runtime/v94”.

Method#2: Create Standalone Application from Command Line

Official guide link. You can compile standalone applications at the MATLAB® prompt or your system prompt using either of these commands. The APP created in this way does not need installation and can be wrapped into Docker. deploytool invokes the Application Compiler app to execute a saved compiler project. mcc invokes the MATLAB Compiler™ to compile code at the prompt.

Chao’s steps using mcc

  1. Open Terminal.
  2. Make directory to store APP files. “mkdir path/to/app_folder”.
  3. “cd path/to/app_folder”.
  4. “mcc -m the_function_to_be_compiled.m -a path/to/codes_folder”.

    NOTE:

    (1) Sometimes it prompts “mcc is not found” or other errors. It could be that MATALB compiler is not installed, just install it. Or it could be the Terminal can’t find the path to mcc binary, replace “mcc” as something like “/home/chao/MATLAB/R2018a/bin/mcc”.

    (2) “the_function_to_be_compiled.m” is a MATLAB function adapted from the main file. Keep in mind to delete any lines like “clear all” in the function file.

    (3) It’s good practice to create a “codes_folder” and copy all “.m” file to this folder. Otherwise, errors are easy to happen.

  5. To run the APP, in terminal, »>’absolute/path/to/app_folder/xxxxx.sh’ absolute/path/to/install/MATLAB_Runtime/vxx ‘argument1_to_main_function’ ‘argument2_to_main_function’ ‘argument3_to_main_function’…

    NOTE:

    (1) Trick to install MATLAB runtime without root privelage. You can install it or just copy the installation folder from one machine to the target machine (both should be the same OS, e.g. Linux) as instructed by Mathworks.


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