MATLAB: Does the MATLAB window fail to appear when I run the MATLAB engine application on UNIX

Question

Why does the MATLAB window fail to appear when I run my MATLAB engine application on UNIX?

When I run my MATLAB engine application on Windows, I get the MATLAB window, which I can use for debugging purpose. However, when I run the same engine applicaiton on UNIX, I do not get the MATLAB window.

Answer 1

This is an expected behaviour on UNIX platform. The rationale for doing this is that when MATLAB acts as a computational engine, it is being used for background processing, where the end user is not aware that the underlying work is being done by MATLAB. As a result, allowing the end user interact with MATLAB (which he/she may not know how to use) would be undesired behavior.

Currently, we do not plan on changing this behavior for UNIX platform.

On Windows, MATLAB engine applications invoke MATLAB as a COM automation server through underlying activex technology. By default, the visibility of this automation server is set to on. As a result, MATLAB window pops up by default for engine applications run on Windows. This window is not meant for debugging purpose and MATLAB engine application developers should not rely on this window for any debugging purpose.