OpenCV, Matlab and STL containers

Question

Many functions in the latest release of OpenCV require the use of STL containers. I run into problems when trying to use them in a Matlab MEX file. I am compiling the MEX files from within Matlab. Both OpenCV and Matlab use the "/MD" flag which is "Multithreaded DLL" for code generation.

Compiler: MSVC++ 9.0 Matlab 2010a OpenCV latest from SVN, 2.11 I think.

The code I am using is very simple:

vector<KeyPoint> keypoints_vec;
SurfFeatureDetector surf;
surf.detect(cvImg,keypoints_vec);

This compiles but crashes when run in a Matlab MEX file. The crash is within OpenCV in vector::resize. The old interface (without STL containers) works fine but is deprecated. How can I use STL containers between Matlab and OpenCV?

Answer 1

I fought with this very problem in the last two days. The problem is this:
libmex.dll (and a whole Matlab) uses Microsoft.VC80.CRT (version=8.0.50727.4053)
But your OpenCV uses Microsoft.VC90.CRT (version=9.0.21022.8)

So you can use the previous version of VC (VS 2005 with SP1 as far as I know), or as a workaround, you can use gcc (MINGW) (in this case they use totally different stl, so they can't interfere).
I did the latter and it works, and it will work with the next versions of Matlab (hopefully).