Re: Matlab and Octave MEX files compatibility

[David Bateman]

Ben Abbott wrote:
> On Jan 7, 2011, at 12:50 PM, Phonon wrote:
>
>   
>> Hello, everyone!
>>
>> I've used both Matlab and Octave for ages, but in the past few days I've
>> been trying to make their MEX files (and such) talk to each other. On
>> practically every forum I find people saying that they are compatible;
>> however, here's my problem:
>>
>> Matlab compiles into MEX files having one of the following extensions:
>> .mexw32, .mexw64, .dll
>> Octave compiles and works with the following extensions: .oct, .mex
>>
>> Is there any way to make Matlab make a proper .mex file that Octave would
>> read, or, alternatively, is there any way to make Octave run .mex32 files?
>> There probably is a simple solution, but I've been at this forever and I
>> just can't seem to figure it out. Simply renaming a .mexw32 file into .mex
>> does not work. In fact, both Matlab and Octave give errors when trying to
>> open it. Any suggestions?
>>
>> Thanks in advance!
>>
>> Cheers
>> -Phonon
>>     
>
> Octave's mex is intended to be source compatible with Matlab. It is not 
> binary compatible.
>
> Ben
>   

Theoretically its possible to make it binary compatible, but no one has
bothered. A mex-file is just another shared object with a known ABI, and
swapping mex files from Octave to Matlab could be like using LD_PRELOAD
to force a different version of the blas to be used with Octave. I'm not
sure of the details of getting octave and matlab mex files abi
compatible and I don't propose to make any effort to add such a feature,
as it give credence to the idea that mex-files from matlab in binary
form could be used with octave despite their different licensing and it
could be construed as promoting theft of mathworks code.

D.