Updating z/OS Explorer by using Eclipse p2 without internet access

If you cannot access the update site, you can get the new version of z/OS® Explorer in one of the following ways:

  • Keep checking the download page to see if new content is available. If yes, download the new stand-alone zip package, and install it by adding the package as a repository archive. For more information about the installation, see Deploying z/OS Explorer to users without internet access.
  • Mirror the external internet update site through a command and refresh your internal mirror with the external contents.
    • To mirror a site, run two special command line arguments against zosexplorer.exe, or any other eclipse.exe that opens Eclipse and shows a splash screen. Each of the command lines takes arguments -source for the site that you want to mirror from and -destination to the location of the target site that you want to create.
      -source
      Is the location of the p2 update site that contains the software you want to copy from. For z/OS Explorer Aqua, it is http://public.dht.ibm.com/imdbl/export/pub/software/htp/zos/tools/aqua.
      -destination
      Is the location to which you are going to download the update site contents, for example, file:c:/temp/aqua_site.
      -consoleLog
      Traces errors such as incorrect syntax or connection time-outs that are written to the .log file in the same location as the eclipse.exe.
      -nosplash
      Is useful if you don’t want to open an Eclipse splash screen. The splash screen indicates that the mirror is not ended, although the operating system marks it as Not Responding when the mirror ends, because the user interface thread is not responsive while the mirror is hovering the source update site and copying it to the target directory.

      The sample full command to mirror the repository files is

      eclipse.exe -consoleLog – application org.eclipse.equinox.p2artifact.repository.mirrorApplication -source http://public.dht.ibm.com/imdbl/export/pub/software/htp/zos/tools/aqua -destination file:c:/temp/aqu a_site

    • After you run the command, replace the org.eclipse.equinox.p2.artifact.repository.mirrorApplication with org.eclipse.equinox.p2.metadata.repository.mirrorApplication in the command blocks above, and run it again.

    The folder c:\temp\aqua_site is a mirror of the public site, and you can point an Eclipse to it using Add Repository from the Install dialog, choose Local rather than Archive.

    The command takes a while to run depending on the speed of the network connection. If the command stops for any reason, it can be rerun and it picks up where it stops.

    You can mirror a tool at a time rather than the entire site from the update site. The file compositeContent.xml is an index file of the tools on the site and how they are laid out in the site. You can open the file http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/htp/zos/tools/aqua/compositeContent.xml directly in a browser to see its XML structure. There is a subfolder /cicsexplorer, which contains CICS Explorer®.

    To mirror individual tools:
    1. Use the full command, but use the -source as http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/htp/zos/tools/aqua/cicsexplorer/update.site/ directly.
    2. Mirror the /eclipsesubset/update.site to the same -destination. Its URL is http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/htp/zos/tools/aqua/eclipsesubset/update.site/. This is because a number of components are shared by multiple tools, and the shared components are held in the /eclipsesubset folder.
    3. You can mirror Aqua update site to a local site as a scheduled job to pick up the latest changes on the public internet site onto your internal mirror. You can also add other products to the same internal site that aren’t part of the IBM z/OS Explorer Aqua release train, such as third-party vendor plug-ins, or open source tools. To add other products to the same internal site, run mirroring pointing -source at the vendor or open source update site and -target at the same time you have mirrored the Aqua site into. This enables you to create an internal list of “approved” software that you can publish to users that was made up of IBM and other tools.