MATLAB ships with libstdc++.so.6, that is missing fish shell compatible versions of LIBCGXX and GXXABI

I already asked this on the fish shell GitHub page (question link), but I'm asking this here since that is what they suggested. I thought they might, considering this is not really their problem. I any case here goes.

System information

fish version: 3.6.1

OS: Ubuntu LTS 22.04

Terminal: Matlab R2023a REPL

The problem

Matlab (R2023a) allows running shell commands from its REPL by typing

!shell_command [options] args

or

[exit, msg] = system ( "shell_command [options] args" ) ;

However, when I do this with the setup listed above, I get the following 3 warnings:

/usr/bin/fish: /usr/local/MATLAB/R2023a/sys/os/glnx64/libstdc++.so.6: version `CXXABI_1.3.13' not found (required by /usr/bin/fish)
/usr/bin/fish: /usr/local/MATLAB/R2023a/sys/os/glnx64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.29' not found (required by /usr/bin/fish)
/usr/bin/fish: /usr/local/MATLAB/R2023a/sys/os/glnx64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.30' not found (required by /usr/bin/fish)

As the warnings say, the version of the C++ standard library shipped with Matlab seems to be missing the versions that fish requires, which can be confirmed by running the following command on the symbolic link libstdc++.so.6 in the Matlab installation folder:

strings /usr/local/MATLAB/R2023a/sys/os/glnxa64/libstdc++.so.6 | grep LIBCXX
strings /usr/local/MATLAB/R2023a/sys/os/glnxa64/libstdc++.so.6 | grep CXXABI

Their respective outputs are

GLIBCXX_3.4
GLIBCXX_3.4.1
GLIBCXX_3.4.2
GLIBCXX_3.4.3
GLIBCXX_3.4.4
GLIBCXX_3.4.5
GLIBCXX_3.4.6
GLIBCXX_3.4.7
GLIBCXX_3.4.8
GLIBCXX_3.4.9
GLIBCXX_3.4.10
GLIBCXX_3.4.11
GLIBCXX_3.4.12
GLIBCXX_3.4.13
GLIBCXX_3.4.14
GLIBCXX_3.4.15
GLIBCXX_3.4.16
GLIBCXX_3.4.17
GLIBCXX_3.4.18
GLIBCXX_3.4.19
GLIBCXX_3.4.20
GLIBCXX_3.4.21
GLIBCXX_3.4.22
GLIBCXX_3.4.23
GLIBCXX_3.4.24
GLIBCXX_3.4.25
GLIBCXX_3.4.26
GLIBCXX_3.4.27
GLIBCXX_3.4.28

and

CXXABI_1.3
CXXABI_1.3.1
CXXABI_1.3.2
CXXABI_1.3.3
CXXABI_1.3.4
CXXABI_1.3.5
CXXABI_1.3.6
CXXABI_1.3.7
CXXABI_1.3.8
CXXABI_1.3.9
CXXABI_1.3.10
CXXABI_1.3.11
CXXABI_1.3.12

Now, this does not seem to have absolutely broken anything substantial, but it seems to be worth mentioning.

The obvious fix is for MathWorks to update the libraries they provide, but I wonder what the right action would be if one wanted to fix this temporarily? Change the symbolic link in the Matlab installation folder to point to a system-wide version of libstdc++.so.6, in case it also provides newer versions (which it does), and see if Matlab can still be started successfully?

[dim-ask]

Does installing matlab-support (sudo apt-get install matlab-support in ubuntu) solve the issue? I think it installs some updated c++ libraries, maybe also the one you have issues with.

[Joseph Hinton]

Try running matlab using the command "env SHELL=<path to bash> matlab"

Not the best solution, but it seems to solve most fish-related issues.

Answer 1

[Shubham]

Hey Santtu,

I understand that you are recieving the error "libstdc++.so.6: version `CXXABI_1.3.13' not found" because of some missing versions of "LIBCGXX" and "GXXABI". This could be due to the libstdc++ library shipped with your Ubuntu LTS 22.04 being older and may not contain the required "LIBCGXX/GLIBCXX" version.

I would recommend you to upgrade the libstdc++ libraries or use the MATLAB's libraries by modifying the environment variables as done in the following MATLAB Answer post: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/643300-why-do-i-receive-the-error-libstdc-so-6-version-glibcxx_3-4-22-not-found-when-trying-to-star

This should resolve the errors you are encountering.

I hope this helps!

[Walter Roberson]

This could be due to the libstdc++ library shipped with your Ubuntu LTS 22.04 being older

No, it is a problem that fish shell needs a libstdc++.so.6 that is newer than what MATLAB provides. Using system() or the ! command runs the command with libstdc++ set to the one provided with MATLAB.

All that I can think of at the moment is:

Use setenv to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to a path that includes the version needed by fish shell. After that, hopefully ! or system() will provide an environment to fish shell that it can use to run.