C/C++ code editing - Best extension for IBM z/OS flavor

[FALLAI-Denis]

Hi,

As stated in our request Support for C/C++ language and IBM XL C/C++ / IBM Enterprise Metal C for z/OS compilers, we would like to be able to edit "IBM z/OS flavor" C/C++ code with VS Code.

Pending a solution proposed by Z Open Editor, do you have any recommendations regarding the VS Code extension that would be the most appropriate, in terms of C/C++ language support for IBM z/OS, and in term of simplicity of implementation?

Thanking you.

[FALLAI-Denis]

In reply to C/C++ - Minimal support for INCLUDE in zapp.yaml for editing and IBM User

In fact, VS Code already manages the C/C++ language as standard funtionnality and implements syntax highlighting, which already makes it possible to manipulate C/C++ program sources.

To complete this first solution, we lack the management of includes identical to what ZOE does for the languages it supports.
The management of C/C++ includes concerns the edition of the code, but also the IBM User Build function for the uploading of includes in the developer's IBM DBB build workspace.

In our context, for C/C++ source code, we are only missing the management of includes and the management of the IBM User Build:

• our C sources will be managed in Git: no need to search for them on z/OS
• our includes can be either in Git repositories (we automatically manage the import of these repositories dynamically), or in PDS on z/OS: we need an access mechanism to z/OS to search for includes
• our C sources will be built by IBM DBB (we supplemented zAppbuild so that it manages C sources), the project build is driven by Jenkins: we lack the user construction by IBM User Build

We already have a debugger for the C language with integration into VS Code (but it's not the IBM debugger, "nobody's perfect").

In the past, our C sources were edited directly on the z/OS system.
The management of characters specific to the C language being complicated, they have been replaced by "digraph" and "trigraph"

• Digraph characters
• Trigraph sequences

There should be a function to toggle between special characters and digraph/trigraph, back and forth.