User wants 32bit version of MatLab R2015a along side to 64bit version already installed... Will the 32bit version run and/or conflict with the 64bit version?

User wants 32bit version of MatLab R2015a along side to 64bit version already installed... Will the 32bit version run and/or conflict with the 64bit version?

Answer 1

[James Tursa]

You can install and run multiple versions of MATLAB concurrently.

[Walter Roberson]

There are a few limitations I can think of:

• in MS Windows, only one of the two at a time can be marked as the active server for ActiveX purposes. The one that was most recently "registered" -regserver option will be used, and there is no way in MS Windows of specifying that you want to access a particular one; this can cause ActiveX / COM references to fail if they were designed for the wrong pointer size relative to what is executing
• If the MATLAB Compiler is being used, the setup files that determine how the compilation is done live in a shared location, so the last version you did an mbuild -setup for is the one that is in effect until you change it. (I do not know if the same applies for mex -setup)
• When you double-click a .mat or .fig file to open it, MS Windows is going to have that associated with one of the two at any one time; I do not recall at the moment how to change which application varieties of files are associated with.

[Image Analyst]

I don't believe point #2 is correct. I regularly switch between 32 bit and 64 bit and compile successfully without running mbuild and have no problems by me or the target/end user.

[Philip Borghesani]

I believe you are both correct on point #2 switching was a problem that was fixed in R2014a. Note the second answer to this question

[Jan]

With some older Matlab versions (2009a-2011b) I had troubles with PERL commands e.g. for compiling mex files: The parenthesis in "Program Files (x32)" confused the parser. As solution I've installed the 32 bit versions in a folder called "C:\Program_", which contains other software, which fails for spaces in the path.

[Sean de Wolski]

There are also a few environment variables you need to set if you want to have different preferences for each architecture of the same version.