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Wazi Code

Choose one of these IDEs to connect to a z/OS system and edit, build, and debug mainframe applications.

IBM Wazi Code is a productive development environment that fully integrates into any enterprise-wide standard DevOps pipeline.

The Code component of IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces enables the development of COBOL, PL/I, High-Level Assembler (HLASM), REXX programs through the use of an industry-standard integrated development environment (IDE).

The Code component of IBM Wazi enables the development of COBOL, PL/I, High-Level Assembler (HLASM), REXX programs through the use of an industry-standard integrated development environment (IDE). The Code component offers essential developer capabilities that include edit, build, and debug across different IDE options.

You can also get the interactive access to z/OS systems with the Code component. It also integrates with modern SCMs, for example, Git. By using the Code component, developers unfamiliar with z/OS and IBM Z mainframe can get up to speed quickly and become productive in developing and delivering applications.

These IDE options are available to you:

  • Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces, realized by IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces
  • Microsoft VS Code, realized by IBM Wazi for VS Code

Features

  • Modern editors for COBOL, PL/I, JCL, HLASM, and REXX that provide language-specific features such as syntax highlighting, outline view, declaration hovering, code completion, snippets, copybook preview, copybook navigation, and basic refactoring.
  • Source code management (SCM) integration to enable integration with any flavor of Git, a popular and modern parallel development SCM.
  • Intelligent build capability that enables developers to perform a user build with IBM Dependency Based Build for any flavor of Git.
  • An integrated debugger to facilitate COBOL, PL/I, and HLASM debugging through IBM z/OS Debugger.
  • Integrations that enable developers to work with z/OS resources such as MVS™ and UNIX files and JES jobs.

Select IDE

As the first step, you should plan and decide which IDE client you want to use to gain development support for z/OS applications.

For more information, see Developing applications with Wazi Code.

Info

Wazi for Dev Spaces can support almost all the capabilities that are available in Wazi for VS Code in the OpenShift cloud environment, with some differences on user experience.

For a deep dive into the similarities and differences in the two enviornments, see Why do instructions for Wazi for VS Code also apply to Wazi for Dev Spaces?

Choosing and installing a client

IBM® Developer for z/OS® supports an IDE (integrated development environment) built on the Eclipse platform. If your site licensed IBM Developer for z/OS Enterprise Edition you have the choice of three IDEs that you can work in.

  • The Developer for z/OS Eclipse client is installed on a Windows, macOS, or Linux® workstation. It offers a robust and extensible suite of end-to-end tools for developing, analyzing, debugging, testing, and building z/OS applications. It supports development of source code from a variety of traditional mainframe and modern cloud-native sources, such as z/OS, z/OS UNIX System Services, Git, and Jazz®.
  • The Wazi for VS Code web-based IDE, which extends the functions of VS Code to provide z/OS developers with a familiar and straightforward edit, build, and debug experience. IBM Wazi for VS Code consists of the IBM Z® Open Editor and IBM Z Open Debug VS Code extensions.
  • IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces provides the z/OS application development capabilities in the OpenShift® Container Platform environment. IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces is a development environment that provides an in-browser IDE that you can use to code, build, test, debug, and run applications from any machine.

To install a Developer for z/OS client, follow the instructions listed in Choosing and installing a client.

Wazi for VS Code

See Wazi for VS Code in this wiki.

Wazi for Dev Spaces

With this in-browser IDE, you can code, build, test, debug, and run applications from any machine without any local environment configurations. Upon a single-click, team members can get their own workspace up and running.

Wazi for Dev Spaces supports almost all the capabilities that are available in Wazi for VS Code in the OpenShift cloud environment, with some differences on user experience.

You can run a user build to compile and link programs during coding and unit testing before the code is ready to be exposed to the repository for others to use. With user build, you can compile your program without having to perform commits or pushes. With the user build setting enabled in your IDE, you can trigger user build simply by right-clicking inside a COBOL, PL/I, or HLASM file. Refer to the full IBM User Build documentation to learn more about how to leverage user build.

See Developing with IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces.

Checklists

All the IDE options provided by IBM Wazi are built on the client/server architecture:

  • The client side provides the user interface that communicates with the server.
  • The server side is a set of z/OS host components.

For checklists in setting up your dev environment on developer computers and hosts, see Checklists.

References