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.

@Otie Are you sure that /tmp actually has 25G of free space? Arch uses a tempfs for /tmp by default (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tmpfs) so I think the free space will be limited by your RAM and swap space. What does df -h /tmp give you? How many toolboxes are trying to install?

Hey there, the problem of korfa in https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/matlab-r2015b/ still exists. Tried to install R2016a the whole day :/ The Matlab installer complains about not having enough space in /tmp, but it should have (25G!): ==> Erstelle und installiere Paket ==> Erstelle Paket: matlab 08.06.00-1 (Mo 18. Jul 17:59:46 CEST 2016) ==> Prüfe Laufzeit-Abhängigkeiten... ==> Prüfe Buildtime-Abhängigkeiten... ==> Empfange Quellen... -> matlab.iso gefunden -> matlab.fik gefunden ==> Überprüfe source Dateien mit md5sums... matlab.iso ... Übersprungen matlab.fik ... Übersprungen ==> Entpacke Quellen... -> Entpacke matlab.iso mit bsdtar ==> Beginne prepare()... -> Creating desktop file -> Extracting file installation key -> Modifying the installer settings ==> Betrete fakeroot Umgebung... ==> Beginne package()... -> Starting MATLAB installer Preparing installation files ... Installing ... [...] (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) # Today's Date: (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Mon Jul 18 18:01:54 CEST 2016 (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) System Info (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) OS: Linux 4.6.4-1-ARCH (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Arch: amd64 (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Data Model: 64 (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Language: de (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Java Vendor: Oracle Corporation (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Java Home: /tmp/mathworks_16073/sys/java/jre/glnxa64/jre (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Java Version: 1.7.0_60 (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Java VM Name: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Java Class Path: /tmp/mathworks_16073/java/config/professionalinstaller/pathlist.jar (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) User Name: root (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Current Directory: /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) Input arguments: (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) root /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) libdir /tmp/mathworks_16073 (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) t true (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) inputFile /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src/installer_input.txt (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) mode silent (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:54) standalone true (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:55) Input file: [...] (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) Starting local product/component search in download directory (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) Searching for archives... (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) Reading /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src/archives (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) Assembling product list... (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) 2210 files found in /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src/archives (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) Reading /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) 15 files found in /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/src (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) /root/Downloads/MathWorks/R2016a/archives doesn't exist ... skipping. (Jul 18, 2016 18:01:57) Archive search complete. 2225 total files found. (Jul 18, 2016 18:02:04) Completed local product/component search (Jul 18, 2016 18:02:05) Installing Product: MATLAB 9.0 (Jul 18, 2016 18:02:12) java.io.FileNotFoundException: /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/pkg/matlab/opt/tmw/matlab/toolbox/matlab/icons/plotpicker-simio.png (Auf dem Gerät ist kein Speicherplatz mehr verfügbar) at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(Native Method) at java.io.FileOutputStream.(Unknown Source) [...] at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) (Jul 18, 2016 18:02:12) The following error was detected while installing matlab_toolbox_icons_common: /tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/pkg/matlab/opt/tmw/matlab/toolbox/matlab/icons/plotpicker-simio.png (Auf dem Gerät ist kein Speicherplatz mehr verfügbar) Would you like to retry installing matlab_toolbox_icons_common? If you press No, the installer will exit without completing the installation. More information can be found at /tmp/mathworks_root.log (Jul 18, 2016 18:02:12) Exiting with status -1 (Jul 18, 2016 18:02:13) End - Unsuccessful. Finished -> Installing license -> Creating links for license.lic -> Creating links for executables -> Installing desktop files install: der Aufruf von stat für '/tmp/yaourt-tmp-johannes/aur-matlab/pkg/matlab/opt/tmw/matlab/help/matlab/matlab_env/matlab_desktop_icon.png' ist nicht möglich: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden ==> FEHLER: Ein Fehler geschah in package(). Breche ab... ==> FEHLER:Makepkg konnte matlab nicht erstellen.

I get the same error "Protocol for the unknown download : files" But I have downloaded the matlab iso file (R2016a_glnxa64.iso) with campus licence from our university. We don't need a keyfile or anything like this. We get a registration key a register the product into matlab. So how do I have to install matlab with this AUR Package?

MATLAB is proprietary software and you need to supply the iso in order to build the package. While some licenses do not provide you with a DVD or allow you to download an iso file, many licenses allow you to download the MATLAB installer zip file which can then be used to build the iso (see, the PKGBUILD and Wiki). If you do not have a license, or your license does not allow you to get the software, then you cannot use MATLAB.

Hi, I have a problem with matlab installation: "Protocol for the unknown download : files". It's possible to resolve this problem, because I really need this program, and I can't download iso and install for it. Thanks

Thanks a lot for your reply and such a thorough approach to packaging! Didn't know about namcap - nice!

I came up with the dependency list using a combination of namcap and my own test suite (basically the things listed on the Arch Wiki). I run namcap and remove any dependency it says is included and not needed and add any dependency it says is not included. I then run my test suite in a clean chroot. I then find the minimum set of packages needed to pass the suite and add them as dependencies. I do not keep a list of which dependencies are needed to pass the test suite. I do know that namcap does not think the libxp, libxpm, and ncursues5-compat-libs packages are needed, but they are needed to pass my test suite. My test suite is not comprehensive, so while namcap may be picking up dependencies that are not needed, passing the test without a namcap detected dependency, does not mean the dependency is not needed by some untested MATLAB function. At some point I would like to go through the namcap output and use that to build a better test suite so I could tell you the exact behavior that would demonstrate why a dependency is included. In regards to the gconf package, I can uninstall it and the test suite still passes. In otherwords, the gconf package is a dependency because namcap says it is needed. Specifically, namcap says: matlab E: Dependency gconf detected and not included (libraries ['usr/lib/libgconf-2.so.4'] needed in files ['opt/tmw/matlab/bin/glnxa64/libcef.so', 'opt/tmw/matlab/sys/jxbrowser/glnxa64/xulrunner/xulrunner-linux-64/components/libmozgnome.so', 'opt/tmw/matlab/sys/jxbrowser/glnxa64/xulrunner/xulrunner-linux-64/components/libnkgnomevfs.so'])

@daniel_shub: how did you come up with the list of package dependencies? For example, gconf - why is it needed? I don't have most of these packages, and doesn't seem to have problems. I'm installing manually, and just came across this PKGBUILD.

@flying-sheep that is a real pain. I am not sure what the best strategy is. One option is to just not create the links at all and let people add /opt/tmw/matlab/bin to $PATH. I think mmex is confusing. I am also worried that deploytool, mbuild, and mcc might also end up with eventual name clashes. Maybe going with something like mex-matlab. For now, the workaround is pretty simple. You can delete "mex" from line 76 of the PKGBUILD or change "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/${_executable}" to "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/${_executable}-matlab" on line 77.

much better yeah! my only problem is that /usr/bin/mex exists in texlive-bin – maybe we should rename matlabs “mex”? (into ‘mmex’ or something)