Open-source Languages & Tools for z/OS

I did a few tests with git. Locally, all was fine.

One problem: when creating a bare repository on z/OS, and then trying to clone it from my laptop I get.
Cloning into ‘repos1’…
bash: git-upload-pack: command not found
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

When showing the path with
ssh manfred@hostsystem ‘echo $PATH’

I get
/bin

which seems to be the compiled path on the sshd server side.

As a workaround I created symlinks of the git utilities in /bin but now I got

fatal: protocol error: bad line length character: ����

Perhaps I did a stupid mistake. If yes please enlighten me if not then my question: How do I configure the PATH variable so that I could clone from remote?

–
Thanks, Manfred

Hi, Manfred.

Git on z/OS does not work as a git server at this moment.

Regards,
Andrey

Hi Andrey, thanks for the info.

Manfred, I was having the same problem. I finally worked out how to get past that problem.

I did not want to put all the git programs into the /bin programs. So the problem was how to get the the path changed in a non-login non-interactive shell (which is what gets generated to handle the request). /etc/profile and ~/.profile only get invoked from a login shell, so I couldn’t use those to set the path. .bashrc only gets invoked from a non-login interactive shell, so it did not do the trick by itself either.

What I ended up needing to do was first modify the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file to uncomment and set

PermitUserEnvironment yes

which then allows you to have a ~/.ssh/environment file which contains

BASH_ENV=~/.bashrc

so now in a non-login non-interactive shell, you can get the ~/.bashrc (or any other script you put in the BASH_ENV variable above) to execute.

In my ~/.bashrc I have

export PATH=/usr/local/git/bin:$PATH

which now got me access to the executables.

Problem 1 solved, but I’m still running into a second problem that I have not overcome yet, perhaps because the product is not ready to run as a server yet.

From my git repository on my windows machine I run

git remote add myZOS ssh://myUser@myZOS.mydomain.com/u/myUser/mygit/myProduct
git pull myZOS

and get a response of

fatal: protocol error: bad line length character: ▒▒▒
Unable to write to standard output: The pipe is being closed.

This often is related to a problem with a response of some error, so I used

ssh myUser@myZOS.mydomain.com git-receive-pack /u/myUser/mygit/myProduct

to verify. I was having a problem with the public key, Once I fixed that, I now get

fatal: protocol error: bad line length character:

followed by some junk… I haven’t gotten past that yet.

Hi Tim,
In the end you are stuck where I was stuck, namely:
fatal: protocol error: bad line length character:

Thanks a lot ,this solved it for me aswell

z/OS git does not currently work as a git server. It can pull from or push to other git servers, but not the other way around.

I am getting the error when also trying to clone my local repo. Should I think this because the same reason that z/OS git does not currently work as a server. If so, should I think “git clone” is a dummy command in z/OS git (at least for now.)

command: git clone /u/ttg/coderepo/project1/.git /u/ttg/coderepo/project2
error: cannot run git-upload-pack ‘/u/ttg/coderepo/project1/.git’: EDC5129I No such file or directory.
fatal: unable to fork

command: git clone /u/ttg/coderepo/project1 /u/ttg/coderepo/project2
error: cannot run git-upload-pack ‘/u/ttg/coderepo/project1’: EDC5129I No such file or directory.
fatal: unable to fork

cloning locally works fine for me

Hello Manfred.
Can you give a sample git clone command you use for local clone. You mean from one directory in your local directory into another folder again in your directory? Or cloning a remore repository into a zos git folder…

Thanks in advance.

Here is a shell session showing both a remote and local clone on z/OS. These same commands should work for you (assuming you have an account on github and ssh key configured):

bash-2.03$ uname
OS/390
bash-2.03$ git clone git@github.com:zorts/hello_world.git
Cloning into 'hello_world'...
bash-2.03$ cd hello_world/
bash-2.03$ make
cc -c -o hello.o hello.c
cc -o hello hello.o
./hello
Hello, world!
This command is ./hello, and it has 0 arguments
./hello with some arguments
Hello, world!
This command is ./hello, and it has 3 arguments
[1]: with
[2]: some
[3]: arguments
bash-2.03$ cd ..
bash-2.03$ git clone hello_world new_hello_world
git clone hello_world new_hello_world
Cloning into 'new_hello_world'...
done.
bash-2.03$ cd new_hello_world/
bash-2.03$ make
cc -c -o hello.o hello.c
cc -o hello hello.o
./hello
Hello, world!
This command is ./hello, and it has 0 arguments
./hello with some arguments
Hello, world!
This command is ./hello, and it has 3 arguments
[1]: with
[2]: some
[3]: arguments
bash-2.03$

bash-2.03$ git clone hello_world new_hello_world

Should I open a seperate bash shell? I am connecting directly via putty, and using git commands. What I didn’t understand is other gir commands like init, add, status … works fine but git clone has driven me crazy. Whatever, thank you very much for your help but i think I got too much time of yours. Sorry for this.

Hello my problem is resolved when i tried with a clean directory which i created manually. I think the problem was related with my files in the repo. Thank you very much for this exciting tool in zos.

A bit late but here it is.

Cloning locally: git clone /mygit/x.git. Directory x will be created containing the clone of x.git

Or from gitlab: git clone git@gitlab.com:Lotz/manfred.git which works fine as well.

I have also tested cloning a local repo, and it works for me.

If you just type “git-upload-pack” at the command prompt, what happens? The message you are getting seems to suggest that git-upload-pack isn’t being found.

Hello.
When I type only git-upload-pack, the following message I get. I think it can’t find the repository, not the command itsef. I think i have made a mistake in installation. I am going to reinstall this time into my own users folder (/u/myuser) instead of /u/ptools/zosgit and try again.

myuser:/u/ttg/coderepo/project1: >git-upload-pack
usage: git upload-pack [–strict] [–timeout=]

Is it planned to support git as a server on z/OS UNIX?

– Manfred

HI, Manfred. We do not currently plan to support git as a server on z/OS.

Hi Jerry,
Thanks for the reply.

I’m not currently sure if I would regard such a support terribly urgent as of course one could have a repository at github, gitlab or company internal github server. Then one could just clone from there.
– Manfred

I stumbled onto this thread as I too was unsuccessfully trying to clone a repo from zOS git and I’m glad the lack of support was mentioned here as I can now move on to other tasks.

I would like to mention though that the concept of using zOS git as a server is a powerful one. Using zOS git as a client limits the user to using only zOS supported editing tools which imposes hurdles when it comes to working a language like Java which is supported by the powerful Eclipse IDE.

A hypothetical scenario that server support would allow is where a Java developer could clone a zOS git repo into Eclipse as a project and develop/debug Java code locally, then push to the remote on zOS, compile and run. I think this functionality would only further promote/demonstrate mainframe modernization.

This scenario is of course still possible with an intermediate remote on a supported platform but adds an unnecessary extra step to the development process and requires extra overhead/infrastructure.

Just my two cents.

-Matt

Hi, Matt. I hear what you’re saying, but support for git as a server on z/OS is just not a high priority for us at this time.This has to do with the specifics of how ssh works on z/OS, and the need to port other libraries to z/OS to be able to support the other git protocols. It turns out to be a difficult problem.

In addition, systems layered on top of git (such as github and BitBucket) provide very high-value functionality (notably pull requests and code review tools) that most git users will want anyway. We certainly use that functionality internally at Rocket.

Thanks for the additional information on why the server functionality is a tough implementation. It makes sense. Any dismay resulting in the lack of server support is far outweighed by the fact that git is available on zOS. I will certainly explore the use cases that you mentioned. We’re very excited to see what we can do with it.

Hi, I’m trying to setup git as a server on z/OS and I found this thread.
Is this still true? No server mode?

Thank you in advance
Cris

Hi Cris,
Currently we don’t have a plan to support git server on z.