'matlabpath' taking too long on startup

Currently, if I run the path command when starting matlab, the result is on the order of 1800 directories. This results in 'matlabpath' taking 120 seconds to complete when starting matlab (verified using the -timing option). The 120 second figure is on a fast machine (a slow machine can take 5 minutes).

    MATLAB Startup Performance Metrics (In Seconds)

total   item     gap      description
=========================================================
 0.00   0.00    0.00   MATLAB script                           
 0.00   0.00    0.00   main                                    
 5.10   5.10    0.00   Session Initialize                      
 6.45   0.14    1.21   LM Startup                              
 6.45   0.00    0.00   splash                                  
13.01   0.13    6.43     Constant Initialization               
13.06   6.61    0.00   Engine Startup                          
13.67   0.61    0.00      InitSunVM                            
18.56   4.73    0.16      PostVMInit                           
18.56   5.49    0.00     mljInit                               
18.56   5.50    0.00   Java initialization                     
18.66   0.06    0.04   psParser                                
185.78  166.88    0.25   matlabpath                              
185.80   0.00    0.02   MATLAB Addons registration              
186.49   0.03    0.66   matlabrc                                
=========================================================
Items shown account for 97.5% of total startup time [TIMER: 1 MHz]

The typical solution to this is "install fewer packages" or "install it locally", but neither of these options are available (because the packages are all needed/used, and there isn't enough hard disk space to house it locally).

What is matlab doing in this 'matlabpath' command on startup? Can this be sped up? Most of these files are stored on SSDs on the network which is faster than the local spinning rust anyway, so is this a latency issue?

Network Statistics:

--- server.loc ping statistics ---
1000 packets transmitted, 1000 received, 0% packet loss
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.081/0.141/0.326/0.015 ms
------------------
--- iperf3 to server ---
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.10 GBytes   942 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.04  sec  1.10 GBytes   938 Mbits/sec                  receiver

R2021a Update 5 (9.10.0) 64-bit (glnxa64)

Answer 1

[Aakash Garg]

Hello Earl,

Its seems a problem with adding the path to MATLAB.

Run the following command in the command window-

>> cd(prefdir + "../../../")
% Run the platform specific function
% Windows
>> !start . 
%Mac
>> !open .
%Linux
>>!xdg-open .
% This should open File Explorer

Close all sessions of MATLAB. Now, rename the MATLAB folder to MATLAB_old.

Open MATLAB. This should resolve the issue.

P.S.- Refer to this if you are curious why this happened - https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/99625

In short, you were trying to add too many folders to MATLABPATH.

Regards,

Aakash Garg

MathWorks

[Yuhan]

Hi Aakash,

This is Yuhan. I have recently encountered this problem as well. However, the solution you proposed didn't help. The matlabpath stills takes too long. I ran in cmd matlab -timing and get the partial log, which is attached:

total item gap description

16.88 10.99 5.90 Init Desktop

175.39 147.32 21.16 matlabpath

Can you please further look into this?

Best,

Yuhan