Installation Location of MEX

Hi,

I am building a peripheral (NLopt library) on an Ubuntu machine where the MATLAB plugin that gets built needs to know the location of MEX. aka:

./configure MEX=/path/to/mex

Where is MEX actually located?

[Jan]

What exactly is "MEX"? There is a Perl script, a Matlab script or perhaps it means the compiled MEX-Function?

[Ryan Livingston]

I assume that you are looking at this:

http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/NLopt_Installation

Right? Can you build a simple Mex file in MATLAB? There is an example here:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/building-mex-files.html#brnq88l-1

If it fails try building with

 mex -v timestwo.c

And post the output here.

[Connie]

hmm. Well I think that at least shows what the problem is, even if I have the MEX variable correct. I will try installing a secondary gcc version to see if that does better.

You are using gcc version "4.6.3-1ubuntu5)". The version currently supported with MEX is "4.4.6". For a list of currently supported compilers see: http://www.mathworks.com/support/compilers/current_release/

[Connie]

Cool. Well that solved this problem (I can get the timestwo(4) stuff to work), so I'll mark the below as answered. Unfortunately, the program still can't find matlab or compile its c code

checking for extension of compiled mex files... mexa64 checking for matlab... no

with a bunch of other c errors, but closer.

Answer 1

[Ryan Livingston]

There is usually a shell script in

 $MATLABROOT/bin/mex

where $MATLABROOT is the output of

 matlabroot

in MATLAB. This should be marked executable and can be invoked as such.

[Connie]

hmmm. That is the correct location I think for the binary, but not liked by this program. It must be looking for something else or other files associated with mex.

checking for mex... /home/connie/MATLAB/R2012b/bin/ checking for extension of compiled mex files... configure: WARNING: /home/connie/MATLAB/R2012b/bin/ failed to compile a simple file; won't compile Matlab plugin

[Richard]

Hi Connie, your problem is that you're using MEX=/home/connie/MATLAB/R2012b/bin/ instead of:

./configure MEX=/home/connie/MATLAB/R2012b/bin/mex

Hope that helps.

[ZHUJUN SHI]

Hi I got the same problem ' failed to compile a simple file; won't compile Matlab plugin'. Would you mind sharing how you solved this problem?