Interoperability

To make the toolbox most useful for other users, it should be depending only on Matlab™ itself, not on a specific operation system and not on any additional (nonfree) toolboxes.

There are (at least) two aspects of interoperability for a Matlab™-based toolbox:

• Matlab installation
  Version and additional toolboxes installed
• Operating system

The toolbox should rely on as few preconditions as ever possible to guarantee a maximum of interoperability between different operating systems as well as Matlab™ installations.

Matlab™ in itself is a commercial program, and whereas it would be ideal to not have to rely on a commercial software, it seems not feasible to not use Matlab™ for our purposes.

Nevertheless, if you contribute code to the toolbox, beware of a few key aspects:

• Don't rely on the latest features that you get with the most recent Matlab™ version.¹⁾
• Don't rely on any additional (non-free) toolboxes.²⁾

Like it or not, but even in an academic scientific environment, you have to deal with all three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).

Although Matlab™ tries to help you quite a bit with that, there are a few things you should be aware of from the very beginning.

A non-exhaustive list of important aspects for cross-platform programming with Matlab™:

• Never hardcode file paths, always use fullfile.
• Don't use system calls.
• Always properly test your code on all three major platforms (if ever possible).