App Designer GUI Deployment on STM32MP with Yocto: Standalone and Web App Support?

Hi,

We are using MATLAB App Designer to develop a GUI application and plan to deploy it to an STM32MP257 processor running a Yocto-based Linux environment. While exploring the deployment options, we encountered a few concerns and would appreciate any guidance or clarification from the community:

• Standalone Application Deployment:Exporting the App Designer GUI as a standalone application requires a separate MATLAB Runtime (around 2GB) to run. Is it correct that this runtime is a required dependency on the target system? Is the MATLAB Runtime compatible with Yocto-based embedded Linux environments?
• Installer & Compiler Constraints:The compiled application typically needs an installer for deployment. If we want to avoid using the installer, the system must have the MCC (MATLAB Compiler) runtime available. Since MCC is not supported on Yocto, does that mean deployment without an installer is not feasible in this case?
• Web App Option:An alternative could be exporting the app as a web app. However, this requires the MATLAB Web App Server, which again seems to be a separate tool. Is MATLAB Web App Server supported on embedded Linux systems, especially Yocto?

Any clarification, workarounds, or suggestions would be really helpful. Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

[Swastik Sarkar]

Hi @Varun Rao,

Both the Standalone Application Deployment and MCC (MATLAB Compiler) workflows rely on the MATLAB Compiler infrastructure and therefore require the MATLAB Runtime to execute the compiled applications

Regarding the MATLAB Web App Server, it is specifically designed for desktop or server-class Linux distributions and may not be supported on embedded platforms like those running Yocto-based Linux.

Given these constraints, integrating any of these deployment workflows directly into an STM32MP257 board running Yocto-based Linux would be quite challenging.

A more viable approach may be to decouple the UI from the application logic:

• Use MATLAB Coder to generate C/C++ code for the core application logic.
• Compile this code into a native executable for the STM32MP257.
• Keep the MATLAB App (UI) running on a desktop or server, and establish communication with the STM32MP257 hardware

Hope this helps deploy your MATLAB App !