Support for manylinux

[DiamonDinoia]

Dear team,

Thanks for producing this action, is very useful!

This action does not work on manylinux I would like to generate my mexfiles on github CI using the following:

manylinux_2_28 (AlmaLinux 8 based)
Toolchain: GCC 14

x86_64 image: quay.io/pypa/manylinux_2_28_x86_64
i686 image: quay.io/pypa/manylinux_2_28_i686
aarch64 image: quay.io/pypa/manylinux_2_28_aarch64
ppc64le image: quay.io/pypa/manylinux_2_28_ppc64le
s390x image: quay.io/pypa/manylinux_2_28_s390x

I believe that this allow to generate mexfiles with a matlab compatible version of libstdc++.

However, when I try to use the image quay.io/pypa/manylinux_2_28_x86_64, setup-matlab says that it cannot install matlab on anything else than ubuntu due to missing dependencies.

I have two questions:

1. will using this image allow to generate a portable mexfile on most linux distributions in one go? My only dependency for the mexfile are matlab, libstdc++, and openmp.
2. If so is it possible to support it?

Thanks,
Marco

[mcafaro]

Hi Marco,

Currently, the setup-matlab action is designed to work directly on GitHub-hosted runners and does not support execution within non-Ubuntu-based Docker containers on those runners.

For your specific use case—where you just need MATLAB to build MEX files—you might consider using mpm directly to install MATLAB. Here’s an example of how you could do this in your workflow:

- name: Install MATLAB
  run: |
    wget -q https://www.mathworks.com/mpm/glnxa64/mpm
    chmod +x mpm
    sudo ./mpm install --release=R2025b --destination=/opt/MATLAB --products=MATLAB

- name: Build MEX function
  run: |
    /opt/MATLAB/bin/mex timestwo.c

[DiamonDinoia]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for you kind suggestion. May I ask if this allows to use the matlab github license or do I need to provide my own?

Thanks,
Marco

[mcafaro]

If you're just building MEX functions, MATLAB does not need to be activated. Are you trying to do more than that?

[DiamonDinoia]

I also run matlab command to test that the mexfile works
for reference https://github.com/DiamonDinoia/finufft/blob/67da1aa4aeb4b627f40184ae79a26b8fb9746f17/.github/workflows/mex.yml:

In particular:

 cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DFINUFFT_USE_DUCC0=ON \
    -DFINUFFT_USE_OPENMP=ON \
    -DFINUFFT_MATLAB_INSTALL=ON \
    -DMatlab_MEX_EXTENSION="${MEXEXT}" \
    -DCMAKE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY="MultiThreaded$<$<CONFIG:Debug>:Debug>" \
    ${CUDA_FLAG}

This uses mex under the hood.
And:

- name: Run fullmathtest.m
      uses: matlab-actions/run-command@v2
      with:
        command: |
          addpath(genpath('matlab'));
          addpath(genpath('build'));
          fullmathtest

This checks that the generated mexfile works.

[mcafaro]

In that case, you'll need to use setup-matlab. To skip the automatic system dependency installation, you can set the AGENT_ISSELFHOSTED environment variable to 1:

- name: Set up MATLAB
  uses: matlab-actions/setup-matlab@v2
  with:
    release: latest
  env:
    AGENT_ISSELFHOSTED: 1

Please note that you’ll need to manually ensure your Docker container includes all the required system dependencies for MATLAB.

This approach should work for now, but I can’t guarantee it will continue to be supported in the future, as setup-matlab wasn’t designed for this use case. We are considering adding an option to explicitly disable system dependency installation in a future release.

[DiamonDinoia]

Thank you! I will try your suggestion

[davidbuzinski]

Hi @DiamonDinoia ,

We have recently added a documented install-system-dependencies input to the setup-matlab action to allow users to opt out of the automatic dependency setup. This means if you have the dependencies you need built into your container, you should be able to use our action. Here is an example of the input:

- name: Set up MATLAB
  uses: matlab-actions/setup-matlab@v3
  with:
    install-system-dependencies: false

Please let us know if this solution works for you.

Thank you!
David B

[DiamonDinoia]

That is great! I was relying on AGENT_ISSELFHOSTED: 1. I will try the new one.