Building COBOL, PL/I, and HLASM programs with user build

The user build functionality helps COBOL, PL/I, and HLASM developers to leverage IBM® Dependency Based Build (DBB) toolkit right from IBM Wazi for VS Code or IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces development environment. You can run a user build to compile and link programs before the code is ready to be exposed to the repository for others to use or do your z/OS development locally using modern tools without context switching. With user build, you can compile your program without having to perform commits or pushes.

Before you run a build, ensure that you completed the following tasks:

1. You have installed the IBM Z® Open Editor VS Code extension and configured it as described in Getting started.

2. You are connected to the host as described in Setting up integration to interact with z/OS.

3. Your host Z system already has IBM Dependency Based Build (DBB) installed and configured as described in Installing and configuring host components.

4. If you are using zAppBuild, you need to include application-conf directory in the working Git repository. The application-conf folder contains properties that are specific to the application to be built. For how to configure your application, see the README file.

5. Set up the user build as described in Setting up the user build.

   Note: In the zopeneditor-sample repository, we provided an example (SAM1LIB) of resolving copybooks using the COPY <copybook> IN <library-name>. At this time, the zAppBuild application does not support copybooks residing in libraries referenced in the <library-name> option. Therefore, running a user build will not result in a successful build.

6. If you want to debug your programs, ensure that you specify the debug options as described in Preparing your program for debug.

Important: User build uses VS Code APIs to automatically detect a project's root folder. If you are in VS Code, make sure each project is opened as a VS Code workspace. Refer to VS Code documentation for details.

The procedure to run a user build varies slightly based on the programming languages of your programs:

• Running user build for COBOL programs

• Running user build for PL/I programs

• Running user build for HLASM programs

When you click to run a user build, it completes the following tasks automatically:

• Uploads only the necessary files and folders to z/OS.

• Resolves and uploads COBOL and HLASM application's copybooks and PL/I application's includes.

• Executes DBB user build script on z/OS.

• Downloads log folders to your local Git directory so you don't have to navigate to the remote z/OS system to view them.