Jeroen's
Jeroen's
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Technical Corner
Simulation software, tube electronics and more
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About Matlab software






















Please read the next sections if you download software I wrote in Matlab.
Software written in Matlab
Some of my software is written in Matlab, a very powerfull programming environment for scientific software (www.mathworks.com). Normally, Matlab runs as an interpreter for the source code files. If I want to distribute my software, then there are 2 options:
  1. I provide the source files I have written. This means that you must have a version of Matlab installed with licences for the Toolboxes that are used by my source files. The advantage is that the source files are, within certain limits, backwards compatible with older versions of Matlab.
  2. Matlab can also generate a small set of files for my application, resulting in a (sort of...) stand-alone application which can run without the need for a full Matlab installation. The user should however not only obtain the stand-alone application, but he must also install the so called MCR (Matlab Component Runtime) libraries. This MCR embeds the Matlab interpreter and all available functions in all Toolboxes. If you have multiple stand-alone applications that you want to run on your computer, you only have to install the MCR once.
The second option seems to be the best, but there are two 'small' drawbacks. First of all, different versions of the MCR are usually completely incompatible. This means that I have to use a certain MCR version as long a possible in order to have as much as possible applications compatible with the same MCR. Why this is important? Well, that's the second drawback: the current version of the MCR is almost 150 Mbytes large! You just don't want to install many different MCR versions.
How to obtain the correct MCR libraries
If you don't have a Matlab version at home that supports my source files, you'll have to obtain the MCR for which the stand-alone executables were generated. I have them made available here (almost 150 MByte). Please note: my website runs under a small account with a fair data limit, and if only a few interested visitors of my website download the MCR then I exceed that data limit very quickly. Therefore, do not download the MCR multiple times if you need it for different computers, but take it with you on a USB stick.
Installing the MCR and my Matlab software
This is simple, just start by installing the MCR and follow the guidelines of the automatic installer. You must have administrator rights on your computer in order to correctly install the MCR. After that, copy my Matlab software to a folder of your choice. Just double-click the executable and you're good to go!
Updating Matlab software
If you downloaded a new version of my software, then simply replace the old files by the newly downloaded files. In the folder where you copied the files, you may notice one or more folders which where created by the Matlab software. The name of these folders end with '_mcr'. Make sure that you delete these folders!