The mainframe application development landscape is experiencing a change of guard. As new blood comes to the platform, the need for tools/IDEs that developers can relate to is critical. The goal is for mainframe to be treated as any other platform and ensuring the same set of tools/IDEs can be used to develop mobile, mainframe or mobile to mainframe applications.
Eclipse Che4z provides a lightweight hosted IDE, based on Eclipse Che, accessible via a browser for the new-age mainframe application developers. The set of components that would be part of this subproject are aimed at providing access to z/OS file system, remote debug and remote editing of COBOL programs with all the modern editor capabilities including syntax highlighting, code assist and real time syntax validation.
Eclipse Che4z provides an components/extensions for Eclipse Che to facilitate mainframe application development by providing:
- Access to resources on z/OS
- Smart editing support for COBOL, the most prominent language on the mainframe
The Eclipse Foundation has a strong history and community around building vendor-agnostic developer tools.
None.
Tech preview & Beta: 3Q2019
First release: 4Q 2019
Although the major pieces will be in place after the initial contribution, we plan to continue enhancing and adding in more components to help the mainframe application development space. Some of the areas being investigated are:
- Smart editing support for HLASM
- Adding in incremental development support for more languages (e.g PL/I, JCL etc.
- Tools for helping with automated testing, and other aspects of app development that may change in cloud
Broadcom will continue to invest in evolving Che4z but encourages additional participation in these areas or others.