I am maintaining a few open source Matlab toolboxes. Although most functions are plain Matlab, some functions are implemented as mex file. The mex files have to be compiled on each platform, i.e. 32 and 64 Linux, 32 and 64 bit Windows, ppc and intel Mac OS X, etc. Since I don’t have access to all those platforms, I have devised a trick to automatically compile the mex files on the end-user’s platform.
Let’s say that you have a function mymexfile, then the file mymexfile.c would contain the c-code implementation of the Matlab mex file. You should save the following code as mymexfile.m. If the compiled mex file (e.g. mymexfile.mexw32) does not exist upon the first call to the function, the m-file will be executed. The m-file will automatically compile the c-file and will subsequently call the compiled mex file. On all subsequent calls, the compiled mex file will be executed directly.
function [varargout] = autocompile(varargin)
% AUTOCOMPILE compile the missing mex file on the fly
% remember the original working directory
pwdir = pwd;
% determine the name and full path of this function
funname = mfilename('fullpath');
mexsrc = [funname '.c'];
[mexdir, mexname] = fileparts(funname);
try
% try to compile the mex file on the fly
warning('trying to compile MEX file from %s', mexsrc);
cd(mexdir);
mex(mexsrc);
cd(pwdir);
success = true;
catch
% compilation failed
disp(lasterr);
error('could not locate MEX file for %s', mexname);
cd(pwdir);
success = false;
end
if success
% execute the mex file that was juist created
funname = mfilename;
funhandle = str2func(funname);
[varargout{1:nargout}] = funhandle(varargin{:});
end