[Pkg-octave-devel] Dynare: git, matlab, testsuite

[Sébastien Villemot]

Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at debian.org> a écrit :

>> My understanding is that the most basic installation of Matlab, without
>> any toolbox, is able to compile MEX files. It relies on gcc.
>
> This is precisely my question: does it require more than just gcc, e.g. a
> library provided by Matlab?  There is mex support in Octave and I am
> wondering whether we could generate the binaries entirely in Debian.

I think this is not possible because of linking problems.

In most of our MEX files we use Matlab MEX primitive functions (such  
as mxCreateDoubleMatrix...) and BLAS and LAPACK functions.

For the MEX functions, we have no way of linking against the Matlab  
library from pure Debian.

Moreover, at execution, Matlab modifies the path for the dynamic  
loader (LD_LIBRARY_PATH env var). In particular, it provides its own  
version of BLAS and LAPACK dynamic libraries, and of course those  
differ from that of Debian.
And those dynamic libraries are not consistent across Matlab versions.  
Up to 2007a, BLAS and LAPACK were in the same binary. They have been  
separated since. This is the reason why in Dynare Windows package we  
provide separate MEX binaries for older and newer versions of Matlab.

So my understanding is that compiling from pure Debian would be  
possible if neither MEX functions nor BLAS/LAPACK functions were  
called from the MEX file, but not otherwise.

-- 
Sébastien Villemot