Setting up integrations to interact with z/OS

Before installing IBM RSE API Plug-in for Zowe CLI on your development machine, you must install Zowe CLI 6.13 or later. For more information about installing Zowe CLI, see Installing Zowe CLI.

Confirm with your system administrator that the following host components are installed and configured on the z/OS host system:

• The host component of z/OS Explorer 3.1.1 or 3.2, which is the prerequisite of the RSE API host component.

• The RSE API host component, which provides a collection of REST APIs that allow a client to work with various components on the z/OS host system, including MVS data sets, z/OS UNIX files and commands, JES jobs, and more.

Note: Even if your system administrator has previously installed RSE on your z/OS, an update is needed to get the capabilities described here.

For information about installing and configuring the RSE API host component, see RSE API documentation.

After installing and configuring the prerequisites and the host component, follow these steps to install the RSE CLI plug-in. You can choose to download the plug-in from IBM as a code-signed archive file to install locally, or do an online installation from the public repository at npmjs.com, which is the repository from which you installed Zowe CLI itself.

If you are using Zowe Secure Credential Store (SCS), follow the following steps to revert your secure Zowe profiles to plain-text profiles before updating RSE CLI plug-in. This will help ensure that you can continue using your existing Zowe profiles after updating. The instructions for updating RSE CLI plug-in include a step for re-securing your Zowe profiles after the update process is complete.

1. Check your version of Zowe SCS with the command zowe plugins list

2. If the version number is below 4.1.0, run the following command to update Zowe SCS:

   zowe plugins update @zowe/secure-credential-store-for-zowe-cli@zowe-v1-lts

3. Revert Zowe profile files back to plain text with the command zowe scs revert -f

If the previous installation of the RSE CLI plug-in was from npmjs.com, run the following command to update to the latest version available on npmjs.com:

zowe plugins update @ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli

1. Uninstall the older version of RSE CLI plug-in:

   • If the original .tgz file of the older version is still in the original location from the installation, run the following command.

     zowe plugins uninstall @ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli

   • If the original .tgz file is no longer in the original location from the installation, complete the following procedure:

     1. Use the file explorer to open the .zowe folder in the home directory.

     2. Within the .zowe directory, go to the plugins/installed/node_modules/@ibm directory and delete the rse-api-for-zowe-cli folder.

     3. Navigate to the .zowe/plugins directory, open the plugins.json file in edit mode and remove the @ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli section as shown below and save the file.

        "@ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli": {
          "package": "@ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli",
          "registry": "installation/location",
          "version": "1.0.0"
        }

2. Verify the uninstallation.

   Run the command zowe plugins list. The list of plug-ins should no longer contain @ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli upon a successful uninstallation.

3. Delete rse_meta.yaml file from the .zowe/profiles/rse directory.

4. Install the new version of RSE CLI plug-in.

   Refer back to Installing the IBM RSE API Plug-in for Zowe CLI to install the new .tgz download of IBM RSE API Plug-in for Zowe CLI.

5. If using Zowe Secure Credential Store, run the command zowe scs update to store username and password securely.

6. If you have existing RSE profiles for Zowe, run the command zowe profiles set-default rse <profileName>, where <profileName> is the name of the profile you want to set as the default RSE profile.

1. Follow step 1 - 3 of Update previous .tgz install.

2. Run command zowe plugins install @ibm/rse-api-for-zowe-cli, which will pull from npmjs.com.