Cobos 2.2.0 Release is available for download

"Turn your Mainframe Developments into an Agile and Reliable Software Factory"

Cobos is one of the most advanced Open Source IDE dedicated to Mainframe application development. Based on Eclipse, it combines the best of both worlds by capitalizing on the open source community innovation and on the Mainframe best practices.

Cobos 2.2.0 includes many new features (detailed below) which address various aspects of productivity improvement in editing, managing, compiling Mainframe resources and their lifecycle, as well as in functional interactivity with the host, centralized management of Cobos developer environment and usage scope. These improvements also pave the way for powerful community extensions to Cobos.
Therefore, the development experience with Cobos leads to software quality improvement, especially if it is used in conjunction with SCForEclipse COBOL, which allows developers to check programs conformance with COBOL best practices based on a customizable repository of coding rules.

Cobos is now fully tested with eclipse 3.6.2 (and with 3.4.2, of course). Meanwhile, a substantial effort of reengineering has been started to improve stability, evolutivity and quality of code. This task will continue in the future versions of Cobos as well.

The COBOL IDE combines the best of Mainframe, Eclipse and Office suites functionalities (!), and includes from now these additional features:
- Functionalities commonly used by Java developers (overview of a variable, open declaration)
- Mainframe ISPF functionalities (CAPS ON for entering the alphabetic characters of code in uppercase)
- Editing columns from 1 to 6 is now a preference of COBOL editor.
- Revision mode "a la word" (autotagging of modified lines configured in COBOL preferences)
- Tabulations configuration for COBOL syntax (e.g. cols. 7, 8, 12, 15, ...)
- SQL, DB2 and DL1 syntax highlighting

Also, the Z/Navigator functionalities have been extended to:
- Sequential file partial display
- Delete file management

The interface of mainframe commands launching has also been widely improved with many features:
- A new persistent view "Commands" showing the command menu as a tree
- Powerful, configurable interface and widely open
- Rexx scripts enhanced with a specific syntax for managing file transfers before and after the launch of a script.
- Download and intelligent display of compilation SYSOUT.
- Ability to support external source configuration management software for checkin / checkout functions.
- host.xml configuration file can be loaded for standalone work.
- Ascending compatibility policy between the Eclipse client and the mainframe scripts.

Additionally, support of IMS applications by extending the dialect of MVS OpenCobol to the pre-processing of DL1 statements has been added.

The OpenSource REXX editor (available on sourgeforce.net) has been slightly improved for better Mainframe Rexx handling and has been integrated to binary version of Cobos distribution.

Finally, host Rexx scripts have been improved with the following evolutions:
- Performance improvements of member signature computation
- Reliability improvements and better error handling
- Better management of temporary files (purge on connection...)
- By default, the ISPF gateway is not longer used (can be disabled)

Notice: this is the Cobos 2.2.0 Release. If you wish to directly download ready to use binary versions of these resources and more useful resources, please follow this link to Metrixware website : http://cobos.metrixware.org. Please feel free to report us any remark via email or in the forum.