Release planning

ZOAU offers features such as a Python API, JSON output support, and a suite of IBM z/OS UNIX System Services command-line utilities. Because it promotes a modern developer experience, ZOAU continues to grow in popularity and capability.

Migration

To support several new capabilities, the ZOAU 1.3 release includes changes that are incompatible with previous versions of ZOAU. If you plan to migrate to ZOAU v1.3, you must understand and perform several steps. To learn more, see Migrating to ZOAU v1.3 from v1.2.x or earlier.

Coexistence

Starting with the ZOAU 1.3 release, a new ZOAU installation can coexist with an already-installed instance of ZOAU v1.2.x. This capability is a behavior change; prior releases replaced rather than coexisted with already-installed instances.

If you plan to have multiple versions of ZOAU coexist in your environment, be aware of the following items:

  • Each release of ZOAU must be installed to a different directory.
  • You must set the environment variables correctly for a single instance at a time. This means that the ZOAU_HOME, PATH, LIBPATH, MANPATH, and PYTHONPATH environment variables must point to the same ZOAU instance. Mixing versions is unsupported and will not function correctly.
  • If you use the ZOAU Python wheel package, it must also match the ZOAU version from the prior step. Using a v1.2.x wheel with a 1.3.x ZOAU will not work correctly.