Compatibility and MEX issues with newer versions of MATLAB on Mac

[gav-hsu]

Sharing some information here in case it's helpful to others:

I had trouble running roast_target (ROAST V4.0) with R2025b on Mac, related to MEX files and security restrictions due to SIP on macOS. Here's what I did to resolve the errors.

Running roast_target returned "Invalid MEX-file" errors. In the past, these could be fixed by going to the Privacy & Security settings to allow the MEX files to run, then rerunning roast-target. This time, however, the error persisted and I realized that the MEX files had to be recompiled.

Specifically, I had to recompile:
cvx_bcompress_mex
cvx_eliminate_mex
whichcpx

In order to compile, I had to run mex -setup, which required me to accept the Xcode license. I only had the Xcode command line tools, so I ran the line of code found here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/73742086

Then I compiled, e.g. mex cvx_bcompress_mex.c

Attempting to compile whichcpx led to errors with SeDuMi, which had to be reinstalled. install_sedumi -rebuild failed, so I installed the latest version of SeDuMi (v1.3.8) from GitHub: https://github.com/sqlp/sedumi

After these steps, I was able to run roast_target.

[gav-hsu]

To follow up, I have since switched to running roast and roast_target with R2026a on ARM/Apple silicon Mac (26.5.2). While further testing remains to be done, I have been able to get it to work. Here are the steps I took.

Due to the different architecture, new MEX files are required.

I downloaded cgalmesh.mexmaca64 from the Iso2Mesh repository (v1.9.8): https://github.com/fangq/iso2mesh
This was moved into /roast-master/lib/iso2mesh/bin, where I had to clear the quarantine attribute: sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine cgalmesh.mexmaca64 and also change access permissions: chmod +x cgalmesh.mexmaca64

Next, I downloaded the GetDP snapshot (3.5.0) from the GetDP website: https://getdp.info/
This was moved into /roast-master/lib/getdp-3.2.0/bin, and again the quarantine attribute was cleared.
Under the switch statement (line 188) in solveByGetDP.m, I added the following lines:

case 'maca64'
        solverPath = [pwd '/lib/getdp-3.2.0/bin/getdpMacARM'];

Lastly, the most complicated part was compiling SPM12 for Apple silicon, since this version is not officially supported. I downloaded the source code folder src from the SPM12 repository: https://github.com/spm/spm12
I also downloaded the same folder from the SPM25 (current stable) repository: https://github.com/spm/spm/releases/tag/25.01.02
I opened Makefile and Makefile.var from both versions and copied the following blocks of code from SPM25 to SPM12:
In Makefile:

verb.mexmaca64:
	$(call verb, "macOS compilation (ARM 64 bit)")

and in Makefile.var:

ifeq (arm64,$(PLATFORM))
  MEXEXT     = mexmaca64
  MEXBIN    ?= mex
  # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37362414/
  OMPFLAG    = -fopenmp=libiomp5
  SOSUF      = dylib
  SONAME     = install_name
endif

I opened a terminal in the src folder and compiled the code:

export PATH="/Applications/MATLAB_R2026a.app/bin:$PATH"
make distclean
make PLATFORM=arm64 MATLABBIN=/Applications/MATLAB_R2026a.app/bin install

To tell SPM12 that Apple silicon is a valid platform, I edited spm_platform.m by copying code from spm_platform.m from SPM25.
On line 160, I changed comp = 'MACI64'; to

comp = uname.machine;
switch comp
    case {'x86_64'}
        comp = 'MACI64';
    case {'arm64'}
       comp = 'ARM';
   otherwise
        error('%s is not supported.',comp);
end

After line 171 I added a new line: 'MACA64', 'unx', 0;...
On line 231 I changed case {'MAC','MACI','MACI64'} to case {'MAC','MACI','MACI64','MACA64'}