Detect if Simulink Project Shortcuts fail when working without GUI

I have a simulink project that uses startup shortcuts. When running Matlab and Simulink in GUI mode, I can see a dialog box open and it says "Running startup shortcuts:" and it lists all of the shortcut scripts that are run after opening the project. When they are successful there is a little green check mark and if they fail there is a red X and a "Details..." button. I can click the Details button to get a error message if a script fails to complete.

When I open matlab in text only mode (matlab -nodisplay) and open my project using simulinkproject('MyProject.prj'), I cannot tell if the startup shortcuts are successful or not. There doesn't seem to be a way to detect if a script completes successfully or fails.

How can I can if the startup scripts are successful?

Answer 1

[Snehal]

Hi @Andrew Chambers,

I understand that you want to track the success/failure of startup shortcuts when opening MATLAB in text-only mode.

You can achieve this by implementing either or both of the following workarounds:

1. Exception Handling (try/catch)
2. Writing logs or files upon failure

Here is a code snippet for reference:

% Exception Handling using ‘try-catch’ and MATLAB functions like ‘warning’: 
try 
    % Your startup operations here 
    % If something fails, it will throw 
catch ME 
    % Handle failure gracefully 
    warning('Startup script failed: %s', ME.message); 
    % Write to a log file for later diagnostics 
    fid = fopen('startup_error.log', 'a'); 
    fprintf(fid, '%s\n', ME.message); 
    fclose(fid); 
    % (Optionally) close the project or raise an error 
    proj = currentProject; 
    close(proj); 
    error('Aborting due to startup failure'); 
end 

The corresponding error log file can then be viewed when using a non-GUI (text-only) layout by executing the following command in the command window:

cat startup_error.log 
% where ‘startup_error’ is the name of the log file 

You may refer to the following documentation links for further details:

• https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/try.html
• https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/warning.html
• https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.project.project.close.html

Hope this helps!