Eclipse Tools COBOL IDE Subproject Proposal

Description

A COBOL IDE allows developers to develop COBOL applications within a friendly, Eclipse-based environment, using various COBOL compilers provided by COBOL vendors.

The COBOL IDE for Eclipse Subproject will build a fully functional COBOL Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the Eclipse platform.  Our focus is COBOL application development on Windows/Solaris/Linux for deployment on each platform. We are interested in participation from others who would like to extend our work in other directions. e.g. wizards for developing applications that use particular library or database or messaging APIs, or extension to other languages.

We are proposing this code base form the initial code for the open source COBOL project hosted on eclipse.org under the eclipse tools project. The project goal would be the completion of a full featured COBOL environment for all platforms. We are looking for contributions from the open source community in the areas of testers, developers and general users who can help us ensure that the COBOL tools work well on all the Eclipse platforms.

The source code for the project is available here.

Our first release function includes:

  • UI Components
    • COBOL editor, which supports all COBOL source code formats – fixed format, variable format and free format
    • Dependency View, Structure View and Template View
    • Creating, Closing and Deleting a new project or a new file
    • Template assistance wizard
  • COBOL Builder
    • Target execution by specifying environment variables
    • Setting compiler and linker options
    • Dependency analysis
    • Other build features (Ant file creation and batch build)
    • Bridge interface for invoking native COBOL compiler
  • COBOL Debugger
    • Debugging GUI for COBOL debugger
    • Setting breakpoints, displaying variables and call stacks that follow the Eclipse debug perspective.
    • Bridge interface for invoking native COBOL debuggers

The bridge interface for the COBOL compiler and debugger will be discussed with the contributors who will support the project.

Please see Appendix A for COBOL IDE perspective and Appendix B for COBOL Debugger perspective. These screenshots are from Fujitsu’s commercial COBOL product.

Status

This is a new project and the initial code base is from Fujitsu’s commercial COBOL product that supports Redhat Linux 7.2, Eclipse R2.0 and Fujitsu NetCOBOL 7.0.

Platforms

The plugins are written in Java with no native code and thus may be ported to any platform supported by Eclipse.  However, the plugins invoke a COBOL compiler and debugger via a bridge.  Therefore, the plugins work only in systems where there is a COBOL compiler, debugger and a bridge for them.

Content

We provide a total of six plugins and packages:

  1. com.fujitsu.cbdt.build – bridge for invoking platform-specific COBOL compiler
  2. com.fujitsu.cbdt.core – COBOL IDE core modules
  3. com.fujitsu.cbdt.debug – bridge for invoking platform-specific COBOL debugger
  4. com.fujitsu.cbdt.debug.ui – user interface for COBOL debugger
  5. com.fujitsu.cbdt.help – online COBOL IDE documentation
  6. com.fujitsu.cbdt.ui – COBOL IDE user interface modules

For the contribution, the package name is should be changed (e.g., org.eclipse prefix).

Development plan

We are supplying a separate project plan simultaneously with this proposal.  We believe it will be possible to deliver a public release in February 2003.

  • Rename our packages to use the org.eclipse prefix
  • Define common bridge interface for COBOL compiler and debugger
  • Dependency analysis among copy libraries
  • Improve stability
  • Internationalization support
  • Other platform support (Windows and Solaris)
  • Support the latest version of Eclipse

We set below the features that have already been developed by Fujitsu Limited.

  • UI Components
    • COBOL editor, which supports all kind of COBOL source code format – fixed format, variable format and free format
    • Dependency View, Structure View and Template View
    • Creating, Closing and Deleting a new project or a new file
    • Template assistance wizard
  • COBOL Builder
    • Target execution with specifying environment variables
    • Setting compiler and linker options
    • Other build features (Ant file creation and batch build)
  • COBOL Debugger
    • Debugging GUI for COBOL debugger
    • Setting breakpoint, displaying variables and call stacks that follow Eclipse debug perspective.

If you want to contribute to the development of these plugins, we welcome the opportunity to work with you. The plan will be updated to reflect the commitments made by contributors to these projects. We also welcome participation of other COBOL vendors who can provide bridges for their own COBOL compilers and debuggers.

The distribution includes a TODO file that contains more detail.

License

This project is licensed under the Common Public License.

 

 

Appendix A: COBOL IDE Perspective

 

Appendix B: COBOL Debugger Perspective