Arch Linux User Repository

TODO:

1. Figure out the users and permissions. Currently, /opt/MATLAB/${_release} has 777 permissions, which is obviously undesired. It might be better to create a user group and require users to manually add themselves to it for security reasons.

2. Improve the installer. For example, the current inotify watcher spams stdout and does not account for the end of the download/installation or the width of the terminal, which results in flaky output.

3. Figure out the dependencies. The list of Debian/RHEL dependencies is public, but it includes some seemingly unneeded packages. This might be because they are required by dependent products/add-ons. Additionally, the current logic for removing bundled dependencies should probably be rewritten. Maintaining an exhaustive list for a single release is very difficult, and these components change without notice. Moreover, the current approach may go against the Arch KISS philosophy. Ideally, we should remove only the problematic components like Qt, XCB, libtiff, gcc-libs, fontconfig, etc.

4. Add auto-discovery for packages written for MATLAB. My plan was to use /usr/lib/MATLAB/${_release} for release-specific modules and /usr/lib/MATLAB/common for shared (mostly architecture-independent) packages. However, load order matters, and "common" modules need to specify which releases they are compatible with. This means we need to implement our own logic for discovering and loading these, likely via hooks, shell scripts, and configuration files (perhaps TOML could work?).

5. Fix the Python components. python-matlabengine does install the Python components built against the version of Python shipped by Arch. However, some proprietary CPython components are not included and are built against ancient Python versions. This likely requires version spoofing or some alternative approach.

6. Write and upload packages for previous MATLAB releases. It is entirely possible to have multiple releases installed simultaneously. I have a few of these packages myself, but they are drafts and not suitable for upload to the AUR.

7. Write and upload packages for MATLAB-dependent add-ons and products. When installing MATLAB required user intervention for source access, it was acceptable to break reproducibility and manually specify required products for installation. Now that we use MPM, it would be better to separate products into individual packages. These packages would install themselves and their dependencies into a specific location, then use appdata to install only the component's files. The problem is that MATLAB often includes conflicting files that need to be combined or overwritten. Obviously, we can't allow that, so a hook must be implemented to, for example, combine *.combine@matlab-simulink and replace *.replace@matlab-documentation files with backups. Needless to say, this is challenging to implement, so the previous approach (having users specify the product list) might still be preferred.

8. Write and upload the matlab-runtime package. I have a draft, but the problem with this package is that it installs the runtime for every available product. Ideally, for source-built packages, we would want to makedepend on matlab-$product and depend on matlab-$product-runtime. However, this is not possible without splitting the runtime packages, which poses the challenges described above. I’ll try my best to revisit this sometime later.

@aoneko, @Reexys, please read the post-installation instructions. If you've lost them, you can find the same information here.

Hello, I've modified the package script from burger's https://github.com/bloatmode/matlab-aur.git. The new script can be located by https://github.com/Victrid/matlab-aur.

This script can:

• Determine and update the versions by the provided matlab installer package, and determine the needed dependencies' version.
• Marked GCC stuff as optional dependencies. These are only used by compiler related programs.
• Removed the license file, then the package can be distributed through network and multiusers on a machine. As matlab is licensed per-user, this can be more practical as users will activate the matlab when they opened for the first time.

Meanwhile:

• The script installs matlab into /usr/lib rather than /opt
• The script do not allow multiple instances of versions.

Should opt/tmw/MATLAB-rxxxxx be given user read/write access? Otherwise toolboxes cannot be installed using the Add-on Explorer.

Edit: This bug actually now occurs as soon as matlab has started

I have discovered a bug using kernel:5.10.16-arch1-1 where when I click on a different window then come back to matlab I cannot click anywhere, I can minimize, expand/restore and close but I can't click on anything else. Restarting the app allows me to use it again however clicking out of it again replicates the bug. Let me know what further details you would need

The following changes since commit 04100d8083b1:

Fixed version typo on PKGBUILD (2021-02-03 13:06:49 -0500)

are available in the Git repository at:

https://github.com/bloatmode/matlab-aur.git

for you to fetch changes up to 7cb38505583b311a25e989c68426f18b6ee30659:

Added instructions on how to download the license file and installation key if the license is provided by an organization and MATLAB is being installed for the first time on a PC. (2021-03-16 02:18:08 +0100)

bloatmode (1): Added instructions on how to download the license file and installation key if the license is provided by an organization and MATLAB is being installed for the first time on a PC.

README.md | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

You can get gcc8 binaries by adding the arch4edu repository.

gcc8 is required to compile mex files using native gcc. This is not a minimal package; if you don't want gcc integration, you can install matlab through other methods.

I ran this on an i7 desktop with 16GB RAM and it choked the machine trying to compile gcc8 for over an hour, but it did complete successfully. I then tried on a lower spec laptop and it aborted with gcc compile errors after about 20 minutes. Could you say what are the advantages of using gcc8? and if this could be made optional as otherwise users with lower spec machines could be waiting many hours just to get Matlab installed.

I was able to overcome the "Error Starting Desktop" by installing both jre8-openjdk and jdk8-openjdk and running export MATLAB_JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk/jre in the terminal, however I am experiencing some internal errors which are due to my integrated intel graphics. I will edit this comment once I resolve these issues, and what I did.

UPDATE: This didnt take long... I am able to start matlab with zero problems now provided I use the -softwareopengl flag when running matlab. Please note that I can reproduce the error by not including the flag - I will add this as an alias so I dont need to type it every time.

Building any AUR package requires the dependencies installed. That is what dependency is. For this package; it's not enough that you have all the dependencies installed locally, but you need to provide the three aforementioned files in the README in the build directory.

hif that was not clear to you; i suggest reading through https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PKGBUILD

I cannot replicate your GUI problems; most likely associated with your system or your desktop environment; but MATLAB installation works, just not the client. If you find a fix; please report it so I may add it to the PKGBUILD if it can be fixed as such.