Deploying Standalone Applications

Compiling the Application

This example takes a MATLAB® file, magicsquare.m, and creates a standalone application, magicsquare.

  1. Copy the file magicsquare.m from

    matlabroot\extern\examples\compiler

    to your work folder.

  2. To compile the MATLAB code, use

    mcc -mv magicsquare.m

    The -m option tells MATLAB Compiler™ (mcc) to generate a standalone application. The -v option (verbose) displays the compilation steps throughout the process and helps identify other useful information such as which third-party compiler is used and what environment variables are referenced.

    This command creates the standalone application called magicsquare and additional files. The Windows® platform appends the .exe extension to the name.

Testing the Application

These steps test your standalone application on your development machine.

Note

Testing your application on your development machine is an important step to help ensure that your application is compilable. To verify that your application compiled properly, you must test all functionality that is available with the application. If you receive an error message similar to Undefined function or Attempt to execute script script_name as a function, it is likely that the application will not run properly on deployment machines. Most likely, your deployable archive is missing some necessary functions. Use -a to add the missing functions to the archive and recompile your code.

  1. Update your path as described in Set MATLAB Runtime Path for Deployment.

  2. Run the standalone application from the system prompt (shell prompt on UNIX® or DOS prompt on Windows) by typing the application name.

    magicsquare.exe 4                             (On Windows)
magicsquare 4                                 (On UNIX)
magicsquare.app/Contents/MacOS/magicsquare 4   (On Maci64)

    The results are:

    ans =
    16     2     3    13
     5    11    10     8
     9     7     6    12
     4    14    15     1

Deploying the Application

You can distribute a MATLAB Compiler generated standalone application to any target machine that has the same operating system as the machine on which the application was compiled.

For example, if you want to deploy an application to a Windows machine, you must use MATLAB Compiler to build the application on a Windows machine. If you want to deploy the same application to a UNIX machine, you must use MATLAB Compiler on the same UNIX platform and completely rebuild the application. To deploy an application to multiple platforms requires MATLAB and MATLAB Compiler licenses on all the desired platforms.

Windows

Gather and package the following files and distribute them to the deployment machine.

Component

Description

MATLAB Runtime installer

Self-extracting MATLAB Runtime library utility; platform-dependent file that must correspond to the end user's platform. Run the mcrinstaller command to obtain name of executable.

magicsquare

Application; magicsquare.exe for Windows

UNIX

Distribute and package your standalone application on UNIX by packaging the following files and distributing them to the deployment machine.

Component

Description

MATLAB Runtime installer

MATLAB Runtime library archive; platform-dependent file that must correspond to the end user's platform. Run the mcrinstaller command to obtain name of the binary.

magicsquare

Application

Maci64

Distribute and package your standalone application on 64-bit Macintosh by copying, tarring, or zipping as described in the following table.

Component

Description

MATLAB Runtime installer

MATLAB Runtime library archive; platform-dependent file that must correspond to the end user's platform. Run the mcrinstaller command to obtain name of the binary.

magicsquare

Application

magicsquare.app

Application bundle

Assuming foo is a folder within your current folder:

  • Distribute by copying: 

    cp -R myapp.app foo

  • Distribute by tarring:

    tar -cvf myapp.tar myapp.app 
cd foo
tar -xvf../ myapp.tar

  • Distribute by zipping:

    zip -ry myapp myapp.app
cd foo
unzip ..\myapp.zip

Running the Application

These steps describe the process that end users must follow to install and run the application on their machines.

Preparing Your Machines

Install the MATLAB Runtime by running the mcrinstaller command to obtain name of the executable or binary. For more information on running the MATLAB Runtime installer utility and modifying your system paths, see MATLAB Runtime.

Executing the Application

Run the magicsquare standalone application from the system prompt and provide a number representing the size of the desired magic square, for example, 4.

magicsquare 4

The results are displayed as:

ans =
    16     2     3    13
     5    11    10     8
     9     7     6    12
     4    14    15     1

Note

Input arguments you pass to and from a system prompt are treated as string input, and you need to consider that in your application.

Note

Before executing your MATLAB Compiler generated executable, set the LD_PRELOAD environment variable to \lib\libgcc_s.so.1.

Executing the Application on 64-Bit Macintosh (Maci64).  For 64-bit Macintosh, you run the application through the bundle:

magicsquare.app/Contents/MacOS/magicsquare