Overview of COBOL Development in Eclipse

When you develop COBOL applications in Eclipse, you use Eclipse features such as a COBOL perspective, as well as background checking of syntax and COBOL launch configurations. Like in other Micro Focus products, you use COBOL-specific projects, familiar functionality for editing and debugging, and comprehensive COBOL Help.

In this Chapter

COBOL Perspective and Projects

The first step in developing COBOL in Eclipse is to create a COBOL project. COBOL projects in Eclipse are like other Eclipse projects. A COBOL project is a representation of the source files (with dependencies) and build commands used to create your application or program. You create a project using a wizard and the resulting project is displayed in the Navigator view, from where you can open your source files.

When you create or open a COBOL project, a COBOL perspective is automatically opened. Perspectives are an Eclipse concept. They present the views, menus and options relevant to your activity. The COBOL perspective shows the Navigator, Outline and Console views, among others. The perspective is customizable, so you can choose your own views.

Editing

The COBOL editor follows the Eclipse style of editors and provides all the features you need for COBOL editing. For example, the editor provides:

Copybooks are handled slightly differently in Eclipse from in other Micro Focus products. You cannot expand the COPY statements to display the copybooks inline. Instead, you open copybooks just like any other files in their own editor views. Copybooks are automatically compiled when their parent files are compiled.

Debugging

The first time you debug a program, you need to create a launch configuration, which defines the program to debug and configures the debugging environment.

When you start debugging, the Debug perspective is displayed, with the views useful for debugging. The default views include:

Building, Project Properties and Configurations

The Project Properties hold all the information to build and run your application. They hold, among other things:

The project information is held in an xml file .cobolProj in your project directory. You can view this file in a text editor, but we strongly recommend you don't edit it.

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