Tips and Tricks

Calling SMILER within a Python script

If you'd like to call the smiler executable from a python script, you could do something like:

import subprocess

command = ["/path/to/your/smiler/executable", "run", "-e", "your_experiment.yaml"]
rc = subprocess.call(command)

You can do this with any smiler command. The rc value will be 0 on success, >0 on failure.

Installing MATLAB and MATLAB.engine

Here is some advice for installation and use for those unfamiliar with MATLAB in Linux, and the MATLAB.engine which is used to call MATLAB from python.

Using MATLAB in Ubuntu (after installation and activation):

Contribution by Brian Wijeratne

• create a symbolic link to open MATLAB via command 'matlab' from any terminal
• my installation directory for MATLAB R2018b was: '/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018b'
• add MATLAB bin folder containing executable script to PATH, choose one of the following: ++ export PATH="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018b/bin:$PATH" restart terminal OR source ~/.bashrc ++ sudo gedit ~/.bashrc (append) export PATH="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018b/bin:$PATH" restart terminal OR source ~/.bashrc
• open MATLAB via terminal command 'matlab'

Installing MATLAB Engine API for Python

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/install-the-matlab-engine-for-python.html

This may fail (permission problems, but then using sudo fails to properly install it too):

cd "matlabroot/extern/engines/python"
python setup.py install

This worked for me (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Python 2.7, 3.5, 3.6, Anaconda 4.3): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45016671/import-error-no-module-named-matlab-engine

cd "matlabroot\extern\engines\python"
python setup.py build --build-base=$(mktemp -d) install

Test matlab.engine via commands (output: True): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhnB7zWgi_Q

import matlab.engine
eng = matlab.engine.start_matlab()
tf = eng.isprime(37)
print(tf)