Matlab Interface under Windows

jfil · March 4, 2020, 2:33pm

Hi everyone,

I am new to acados and I am trying to use the Matlab interfaces under Windows.
I successfully installed following the: https://docs.acados.org/installation/index.html

However, when I try to run the minimal_example_ocp I receive following error:
To use ‘mbuild’, the following product must be licensed, installed, and enabled: MATLAB Compiler SDK

Is there any way of using Acados with Matlab under Windows without mbuild, resp. without the necessity of MATLAB Compiler SDK license?

Thank you for the information!
Jan

FreyJo · March 4, 2020, 3:19pm

Hi Jan,

first of all welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately, right now it is not possible to use acados Matlab from Windows without MATLAB Compiler SDK.
We were also not really aware of that dependency.

I think it should be possible to replace this mbuild call with a system call, similarly to how it is done for Linux.

github.com

acados/acados/blob/35288465716ec7abc538909d77e98dd1e0b70374/interfaces/acados_matlab_octave/ocp_generate_casadi_ext_fun.m#L145



if ispc
    ldext = '.lib';
else
    ldext = '.so';
end

lib_name = ['lib', model_name];

if ispc
    mbuild(c_files{:}, '-output', lib_name, 'CFLAGS="$CFLAGS"', 'LDTYPE="-shared"', ['LDEXT=', ldext]);
else
    system(['gcc -O2 -fPIC -shared ', strjoin(c_files, ' '), ' -o ', [lib_name, ldext]]);
end

for k=1:length(c_files)
    movefile(c_files{k}, opts_struct.output_dir);
end

movefile([lib_name, ldext], fullfile(opts_struct.output_dir, [lib_name, ldext]));

You have to specify the correct compiler binary somehow.

Suggestions on how to improve the Windows workflow are definitely welcome!

Best,
Jonathan

aknight0 · May 5, 2020, 1:08am

Good news, I figured out that if you install mingw as described in the latest docs, adding the mingw bin folder to the path, you can use the Linux system call directly on Windows. That is, comment out the ispc statement, and just use system(['gcc -O2 -fPIC -shared ', strjoin(c_files, ' '), ' -o ', [lib_name, ldext]]);. This has to be done in both the sim and ocp files, but I was able to run the getting started examples without the Matlab Compiler SDK.