If you'd like to call the smiler executable from a python script, you could do something like:

import subprocess

command = ["/path/to/your/smiler/executable", "run", "-e", "your_experiment.yaml"]
rc = subprocess.call(command)

You can do this with any smiler command. The rc value will be 0 on success, >0 on failure.

Here is some advice for installation and use for those unfamiliar with MATLAB in Linux, and the MATLAB.engine which is used to call MATLAB from python.

Contribution by Brian Wijeratne

• create a symbolic link to open MATLAB via command 'matlab' from any terminal
• my installation directory for MATLAB R2018b was: '/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018b'
• add MATLAB bin folder containing executable script to PATH, choose one of the following: ++ export PATH="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018b/bin:$PATH" restart terminal OR source ~/.bashrc ++ sudo gedit ~/.bashrc (append) export PATH="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018b/bin:$PATH" restart terminal OR source ~/.bashrc
• open MATLAB via terminal command 'matlab'

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/install-the-matlab-engine-for-python.html

This may fail (permission problems, but then using sudo fails to properly install it too):

cd "matlabroot/extern/engines/python"
python setup.py install

This worked for me (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Python 2.7, 3.5, 3.6, Anaconda 4.3): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45016671/import-error-no-module-named-matlab-engine

cd "matlabroot\extern\engines\python"
python setup.py build --build-base=$(mktemp -d) install

Test matlab.engine via commands (output: True): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhnB7zWgi_Q

import matlab.engine
eng = matlab.engine.start_matlab()
tf = eng.isprime(37)
print(tf)