Bug 466140 – sci-mathematics/matlab - Important software for any field touching numerical computing

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Ted Tanberry 2013-04-16 18:46:10 UTC]

MATLAB is an important software in any field touching numerical computing. In order to avoid polluting the filesystem with unaccounted for files, I have adjusted an ebuild provided originally by Mario Kicherer. With the proper environmental variables set beforehand, this ebuild installs cleanly.

Reproducible: Always




I have not addressed all issues required for a truely compliant ebuild. The following points remain:

- Currently, LICENSE="", this will need to be specified in more detail
- The dependencies are somewhat nebulous, I've thrown in x11-libs/libX11 for the X dependencies
- MATLAB is known to be runnable without X, using either -nodesktop (or even harsher, -nojvm). As such we would maybe want an X USE flag (say for server installations as well)?
- MATLAB's Java dependencies are mostly autarkic and do not require anything provided by the system

[Comment 1 Ted Tanberry 2013-04-16 18:46:53 UTC]

Created attachment 345722 [details]
matlab-2012b.ebuild

[Comment 2 Panagiotis Christopoulos (RETIRED) 2013-04-16 21:24:47 UTC]

Where are the sources/binaries etc? the user will have to put the linux iso? The license thing is also something that we should research. I don't know if they even let packaging it in distros. I agree that it's an important software for scientific computing.

[Comment 3 Ted Tanberry 2013-04-16 22:35:44 UTC]

Sources have to be provided by setting CD_ROOT (I get mine from the university in a tarball). The installation key and license file also have to be specified a priori by environmental variables.

You will very likely not get permission to redistribute this installer, but I'm sure we can cope with that.

[Comment 4 Pacho Ramos 2015-08-05 15:33:12 UTC]

Also CCing sci team as maybe they are interested :/

[Comment 5 Pacho Ramos 2015-08-05 15:34:16 UTC]

There are newer ebuild (up to 2014 vrsions) at http://gpo.zugaina.org/sci-mathematics/matlab

[Comment 6 Marius Brehler 2015-08-05 20:55:16 UTC]

Packing MATLAB is quite challenging, since the installer needs the information which toolboxes should be installed. By default, all available toolboxes (including Simulink) are installed, which is normally undesirable.
Beside the toolboxes, also a license server can be installed if I remember correctly.

Further, a network license or a single user license can be chosen. The license file and the network.lic file (if a network license is chosen) can be installed to several locations. IMHO, this is not implemented in a clean way in the zugaina.org ebuils.


Anyway, the command line installer, as well as the graphical installer lets the user install MATLAB to /opt/MATLAB or /usr/local/MATLAB, without polluting the filesystem. Only symlinks to /opt/bin or /usr/local/bin have to be set. This and mainly the trouble with selecting the toolboxes are the reasons to avoid writing an ebuild for MATLAB. If somebody is really willing to get into this trouble I could assist getting it into the science overlay.

[Comment 7 Michael Orlitzky 2022-05-09 12:19:05 UTC]

(In reply to Marius Brehler from comment #6)
> Packing MATLAB is quite challenging...

To say the least. And there's no real benefit to "packaging" a DRMed binary blob like this. It could never support Gentoo's various architectures and system libraries, it would never make use of anything in make.conf, or get security updates...

If you need the real MATLAB (as opposed to sci-mathematics/octave), you should install it in a Debian VM -- pick a supported LTS release from the MATLAB webpage to guarantee that it will work:

  https://www.mathworks.com/support/requirements/matlab-system-requirements.html

An ebuild for this in ::gentoo would be a pyrrhic victory, and TBH we have better things to do.