Open-source Languages & Tools for z/OS

Born and raised on open systems and wanting to edit z/OS source code in Eclipse?

Check out the Eclipse’s ‘Remote System Explorer’ plugin to read and edit remote files on my local
machine. Works well for all file types except you have to explicitly specify the encoding type
to: IBM 1047, during the remote machine configuration, within Eclipse.

I seem to be having some difficulty hooking this up. What connection type are you using (e.g. FTP, SSH, Telnet)? I have been able to get connected using FTP, but listing MVS datasets does not seem to work for me. Also, where did you specify the IBM 1047 encoding? I have not been able to track that down.

Connection Type should be “SHH Only”. Once the connection is established to a specific server, edit the connection properties by right clicking on the connection name and select “Host” and you should see the “Default Encoding” selection. Make sure you specific IBM-1047 as the default. Let us know if this helps.

After establishing a SSH connection, although you will be able to open files from the remote file system, a file may not be readable depending upon the file type. ( Example: .c files ). To resolve this, while the file is open navigate to Eclipse’s main menu: File -> Properties -> Text File Encoding and change the default to Other: IBM-1047 and apply.

I was successful in connecting, but was only able to get easy access to USS files. Access to z/OS native datasets was problematic.

There is an ‘IBM Explorer for z/OS’ Eclipse plugin at

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/htp/zos/tools/aqua/

that provides some additional tools such as a simpler interface to MVS datasets and the JES queue. There is a server side component that can be installed on z/OS, but I was able to get quite a lot using a basic FTP connection.