matlab script editing

Question

Hi,

I would like to edit matlab scripts in two cases

(1) In matlab Command window running in a linux terminal, how to create and edit a script file? use

edit(filename)

will invoke the interactive editor, which is not desired while operating on a linux server.

(2) In emacs, is there any way to edit matlab script conveniently? Which is better, using MATLAB-Emacs or EmacsLink?

when I am trying to cvs checkout MATLAB-Emacs from http://sourceforge.net/scm/?type=cvs&group_id=154105, which modulename should I specify?

Thanks!

---

EDIT:

When installing MATLAB-emacs, there is some problem. I thought my CEDET is installed here:

/usr/share/emacs22/site-lisp/cedet-common   
/usr/share/emacs22/site-lisp/cedet-contrib  

My CEDET is of version 1:1.0pre4-3 （intrepid) on Ubuntu. So I type the command:

$ make "LOADPATH=/usr/share/doc/cedet-common /usr/share/doc/cedet-contrib"    
 for loadpath in . /usr/share/doc/cedet-common /usr/share/doc/cedet-contrib; do \    
       echo "(add-to-list 'load-path \"$loadpath\")" >> autoloads-compile-script; \    
    done;    
 "emacs" -batch --no-site-file -l autoloads-compile-script -f cedet-batch-update-autoloads matlab-load.el .    
 Generatim autoloads for cedet-matlab.el...    
 Generatim autoloads for cedet-matlab.el...done    
 Generatim autoloads for matlab.el...    
 Generatim autoloads for matlab.el...done    
 Generatim autoloads for mlint.el...    
 Generatim autoloads for mlint.el...done    
 Generatim autoloads for semantic-matlab.el...    
 Generatim autoloads for semantic-matlab.el...done    
 Generatim autoloads for tlc.el...    
 Generatim autoloads for tlc.el...done    
 Generatim autoloads for semanticdb-matlab.el...    
 Generatim autoloads for semanticdb-matlab.el...done    
 Updatim header...    
 Updatim header...done    
 Wrote /home/tim/.emacs.d/matlab-emacs/matlab-load.el    
 make: *** No rule to make target `matlab-publish.el', needed by `lisp'.  Stop.    

What's wrong? Thanks!

Answer 1

You should be aware that starting with version R2009a EmacsLink has been removed from Matlab, so I would say that at this point Matlab-Emacs is a better alternative. The main strength of EmacsLink was tighter and integration with Matlab, especially when using the debugger, but current version of Matlab-Emacs is quite capable and will probably satisfy most people's needs just as well as EmacsLink.

In order to invoke Emacs from Matlab, the cleanest solution is to run the Emacs server (M-x server-start). The edit() command can then be set up to open the script in Emacs. The detailed instructions on how to do this, as well as on running matlab-shell as inferior process are provided here:

http://blogs.mathworks.com/desktop/2009/09/14/matlab-emacs-integration-is-back/

Regarding CVS checkout: modulename is "matlab-emacs". You used to be able to download an archive and simply unpack into your elisp directory.

EDIT: I decided to reinstall matlab-emacs; here is a step-by-step of what I did. (The steps are pretty obvious, but this might still be useful seeing how it's easy to run into a compilation error or to misinterpret some instructions). Note that matlab-emacs didn't compile until I reinstalled CEDET.

Download CEDET from http://cedet.sourceforge.net/ (1.0pre7 in my case) Uncompress the archive into ~/.emacs.d/elisp/ (now have ~/.emacs.d/elisp/cedet-1.0pre7/ directory) Compile CEDET via make EMACS=/usr/bin/emacs While in ~/.emacs.d/elisp, do the cvs checkout:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/matlab-emacs co -P matlab-emacs

Compile matlab-emacs via

make "LOADPATH=../cedet-1.0pre7/common ../cedet-1.0pre7/eieio ../cedet-1.0pre7/semantic/bovine/ ../cedet-1.0pre7/semantic/"

Ideally, everything should compile; now it's time to edit startup files: in the .emacs add

(setq load-path (cons "~/.emacs.d/elisp/matlab-emacs/" load-path))
(load-library "matlab-load")

and in matlab's startup.m add

addpath('~/.emacs.d/elisp/matlab-emacs/toolbox','-begin');
rehash;
emacsinit;

That should do it! Launch emacs, and do M-x matlab-shell. If edit foo.m doesn't open foo.m in emacs, make sure that the server has been launched (M-x server-start).

To be most productive, you might wish to figure out what works for you in terms of sending commands from the edit buffer to matlab process (experiment with the shortcuts in the mode help). Finally, if you need to debug stuff, do dbstop in foo, and when you run foo you can either use use dbstop family commands (look them up) or turn on toolbar (M-x tool-bar-mode) and use the buttons there to control breakpoints, stepping, continuing, etc. When finished, type dbquit.

Unfortunately, if you are on Windows, matlab-shell is not an option (which is a little surprising, seeing how I can run pretty much everything else under the sun from the command line -- Mathematica, R, numpy...) -- so your options for tight emacs/matlab integration are somewhat limited (unless you don't mind running an old matlab version that supports emacslink).

Answer 2

The matlab-emacs project at http://matlab-emacs.sourceforge.net/ is a slightly more up-to-date version of the Emacs scripts available in the EmacsLink directory that comes with MATLAB. It is OK to use the matlab-emacs project files with the EmacsLink files that comes with MATLAB. The "modulename" is "matlab-emacs".

I made a blog post about how to use Emacs with MATLAB in more recent versions of MATLAB where the EmacsLink support was dropped. You can read it here:

http://blogs.mathworks.com/desktop/2009/09/14/matlab-emacs-integration-is-back/

The scripts here show how to tweak MATLAB to to use "emacsclient" so that files are pulled up in an already running Emacs.

EDIT:

The build system is a bit imperfect with a partial download. The fact that matlab-publish didn't compile is not critical.

The matlab-emacs code from CVS includes a toolbox directory with some M code in it. When you run that code, it should setup MATLAB to use emacsclient as the editor. I wrote emacsinit.m against the most recent MATLAB, so you may need to edit it with older MATLABs that don't support all features.

To run emacsclient from matlab-shell, the path should be setup automatically, and it should run emacsclient automatically. If you don't use matlab-shell, you will need to add that directory to your MATLAB path, then call emacsinit.

If it doesn't work for calls to edit, then I'd guess an older MATLAB doesn't have the same configuration features. You can start MATLAB once with the desktop enabled, and use the Preferences dialog to specify your external editor as emacsclient -n.

Answer 3

The reason that matlab-publish.el does not compile is because in fact it is not downloaded (thus missing) by the MATLAB script dl_emacs_support.m. I also find that the download script also did not download company-matlab-shell.el, which exists in the tarball from CVS. Consequently, when make is called, error occurs when the required files are not found.

Even worse, the dl_emacs_support.m script is replaced with the file from CVS when the source files are downloaded by executing the script in MATLAB. Patches or modifications to dl_emacs_support.m is thus lost after the files are downloaded.

To be safe, I recommend to download matlab-emacs from the tarball on the CVS server, or checkout the source. The compilation should go well then.

Remark about CEDET: I checked out CEDET source code and compile it with no sweat. If you are using Ubuntu, I believe the following packages in the repository should be installed before compiling matlab-emacs: cedet-common, ede, eieio, semantic, speedbar. These packages are installed to /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp, so the LOADPATH should be "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/cedet-common /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/ede /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/eieio /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/semantic /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/semantic/bovine".