Cobos and Source Control Management

Cobos provides simple ways to integrate with your favorite mainframe Source Control Management …

Cobos is an eclipse IDE dedicated to COBOL development. It seamlessly integrates with every SCM accessible thru Eclipse plug-ins such as CVS, SVN, Git for the Open Source side, or Dimension, Endevor, ClearCase for the proprietary side.

That said, the mainframe sites have not waited for eclipse to implement their SCM and have a well established ISPF tooling. They do not wish to question it (though there would be much to say about this…).
These tools were generally created in the 80s and covers version management, generation of executables, management of environments (at least test, acceptance and production), etc … – we are now talking about ALM (Versioning, Build, Deploy) –

Obviously, as soon as you install Cobos, the question of integration with existing SCM arises.
– If the customer wishes to purchase plugins corresponding to its tools, the case is over (well, almost … )
– If this is not the case (and this is the most common), you will have to integrate Cobos with existing procedures. Chance! Cobos has been designed to adapt to different sites habits.

Cobos commands interface lets you configure scripts and / or mainframe JOBs to run from eclipse. Cobos can upload a source before running a command, generate and submit JCL, etc. …
The launch comes from a form whose fields can be automatically filled according to the workspace context (from the properties of the source being edited for example).
At the end of processing on the mainframe, Cobos retrieves and processes the results (displaying messages, opening a source in the editor, displaying a SYSOUT).

It is therefore straightforward to implement the check-out and check-in of your favorite SCM even if it is a specific development or based on market tools such as ENDEVOR, SCLM, LCM, etc … (It is of course advisable whenever possible to reuse the existing procedures with some customisation for Cobos.)

This facility demonstrates the ability to customize Cobos and its adaptability to all organizations.

To go further:
– Another deeper integration solution is provided with the plug-in Z/Navigator via an exit routine.
– To achieve full integration, a specific plug-in was developed for a client using LCM.