Getting Matlab to work with Emacs

First of all you will need to get Matlab inside Emacs. Happily for you, there is a project for that (like always…).

You can get it from MELPA: M-xpackage-installmatlab-mode

Otherwise you can still get the source at https://sourceforge.net/p/matlab-emacs/src/ci/master/tree/. And find how to install it manually on the installation instructions of the source.

First configuration

You can customize some basic properties in your .emacs file. Here is an example of the configuration in my .emacs. The

matlab-shell-command

sets the path to the bin of your MATLAB installation, which enables you to configure the version of MATLAB you want to choose if you have multiple ones installed on your computer. You definitely want to add the “-nodesktop -nosplash” options to the

matlab-shell-command-switches

variable. You may notice that I have also added the “-softwareopengl”. You can do it if you have some issues for starting matlab with your graphic card.

Finally, you can also add the so that when you run a script the current MATLAB directory is automatically changed and the indentation is enabled.

;; This is for the manual installation
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/include/matlab")
(load-library "matlab-load")
;; Some customization for MATLAB installation
(setq matlab-shell-command "/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/bin/matlab")
(setq matlab-shell-command-switches (list "-softwareopengl -nodesktop -nosplash"))
(setq matlab-indent-function t)
(setq matlab-change-current-directory t)
;; enable the matlab-mode for the .m files
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.m$" . matlab-mode))
;; Enable CEDET
(matlab-cedet-setup)
;; Add the bin to load-path so that you can get the functions on CEDET
(add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/bin")
;; Enable flycheck for MATLAB
(eval-after-load 'flycheck '(require 'flycheck-matlab-mlint))