Programmatically Disable a Toolbox

I have an external toolbox (created by me) and I want to disable it (not uninstall it), do some stuff, and then re-enable it.

I have looked through the available methods in matlab.addons.toolbox, but I only see options for installing and uninstalling.

Looking at other ideas, removing the paths would be a way to disable the toolbox, but how do I know (programatically) what paths to remove? Looking in the Add-Ons explorer I can see the paths associated with the toolbox and I have an option to diasble it, but I can't get either of those through the matlab.addons.toolbox API.

I think I either need a way to get the paths for the toolbox, or I need a method that allows me to disable it.

Am I missing something that exists today to do this?

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

Does matlab.addons.disableAddon do what you want?

[the cyclist]

@Cris LaPierre, looks like your URL got messed up? My "correction" did, too, when I tried the same way. Here it is without separate name for the link: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.addons.disableaddon.html

[Matt Butts]

disableAddon is exactly what I wanted. I just never thought to explore up a level, I was stuck at matlab.addons.toolbox.

Thanks!

[Cris LaPierre]

Thanks. I've updated it.

[DGM]

Holy smokes I didn't know such a thing was available, but it's been a long time since I looked.

Prior to R2017b, was there a way to do the same?

[Cris LaPierre]

I do not know. I assume you picked that release because you noticed on the doc page that this was introduced in R2017b.

[DGM]

Yes. This sort of functionality is something I've looked for before, but I would have been running R2009b, R2012a or R2015b at the time. I still do compatibility checking in older versions.

The addons manager in R2015b doesn't even have an option to enable/disable products in the GUI, so maybe that's part of underlying changes to the addons system.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

Another way is you could remove the toolbox folder(s) from the path with rmpath

[Matt Butts]

In order to do that, I need to know what path the toolbox is installed at. I can see that in Add-Ons explorer, but I havent seen the associated paths in any output from the command line add-on methods.

[Image Analyst]

Use the path variable in your code:

mp = path % store the MATLAB path in variable mp.  
% Then search it to find and remove the toolbox folders.
% Stick new path back into path
path = savepath(mp)

Finding the folders and deleting them from the variable is probably more complicated than the other solution given to you.

[Matt Butts]

I would be guessing at whether a path belongs to the installed toolbox or not. And I cannot use any known structure about the particular toolbox's paths, because the actual reason I am using this code is to remove old paths from the MATLAB path that point to defunct (old) installations of the same toolbox.

In order to use the remove path method, I would need to know explicitly which paths are there because of the installed toolbox.

As you mentioned though, disableAddon is exactly what I wanted and is far more robust.