Adding external files to Matlab Compiler app in R2025a

Unfortunately I had to upgrade to R2025a recently and have been hugely disppointed by what seems like a massive regression in the app compiling workflow using Matlab Compiler. In R2024a, which I was using before, I was confident I could have got my app packaged up in 15 minutes, with R2025a I've been battling with it for over a day and still finding it troublesome. Has anyone else had experience using this on a complex project?

This huge change is not adequately covered in Release Notes nor in product help, but now you have to have a Matlab project in order to compile using the app. I've never used projects before (they seemed to offer nothing for our work style) so already this was a big change. But they have serious restrictions compared to past versions too.

It seems to accept code not being under the project folder no problem, which is a relief as I have a large repository of code that is used and I can't put it all under a project directory. However, I also use dlls, some icons, etc and in the past I could simply add these to the 'Files required for your application to run' section of the compiler. They would end up in the exact same relative location on the user's machine so my functions that use relative paths to read them worked fine in deployed apps too.

But now, in R2025 the 'Custom requirements' section of 'Files required for Standalone to run' insists on any file that is added being under the project folder. This means I have to take a copy of dlls, icons, etc and put them there. But these files get unpacked to a completely different location on the target machine, so any code that expects these to exist in a certain relative folder location breaks.

I can use ctfroot to take me to the parent folder where the app is deployed, but not the specific app folder under that, so I have to search around under that folder to find my dlls in some subfolder.

This is a fundamental change from R2024a and I am very disappointed by such a massive regression in the workflow. Matlab has always been excellent at backwards compatibility in almost every area, but this has made what used to be a relatively efficient process into something that is a struggle to make work at all.

[dpb]

I suggest filing official support request with Mathworks.

[Adam]

Yeah, I did that yesterday, just thought I might as well see if anyone in the community has experience of using this and if it is just that I am totally new to using projects as a concept and am missing obvious functionality rather than it simply having been removed or obfuscated.

[Xiao]

Yup, fustrating as hell and nigh unusable at the moment. Mathworks has been silent so far.

Answer 1

[Helen Zhu]

Thank you for your feedback.

Our Dev team has received the input and is working on adressing these features in a future release.

I believe you have already recieved workarounds from our suppor team.

But for the visibility of other audiences of this MATLAB Answer, I am sharing the workaround here:

To add files as "Files installed for your end user", you can use compiler.package.installer command line with "AdditionalFiles" argument.

[dpb]

I've not built very complex applications, but I wonder--would it make sense for the arguments such as 'AdditonalFiles' to also accept a filename containing the file list rather than having to build/pass a perhaps complicated list directly?

Also, why not a make utility rather than trying to build everything from the one command trying to emulate the capabilities?

[Helen Zhu]

Hi dpb,

Thank you for your feedback.

For any future questions or suggestions about our products, we recommend contacting MathWorks Technical Support directly. While the MATLAB Answers community is a great resource, posts here are not always guaranteed to be seen by MathWorks staff.

Thanks.

[dpb]

Helen, I was thinking of perhaps some local discussion on the broached ideas here from some who, unlike me, have complex apps they are building before submitting enhancement request cold.

Answer 2

[Pete]

This is ABYSMAL. I have to deliver an app for a project in two days and this new application compiler will not work for me at all. I cannot even add my main file - I keep getting "Files must be under the project folder to be used by this feature". All my files are in the same folder and I still get the error.

[dpb]

Submit this to Mathworks as an official support request/bug at <Product Support Page>

[Adam]

If you are able to install older versions of the software I would use R2024b or earlier to build your code unless it includes functionality that is new to R2025a or later. This is what I am still doing. I never did go back to that mess and try to get it working, even though I'll have to some day.