Marrying Legacy Automation Code with Modern Tooling (OPS/REXX VS Code Extension)
OPS/MVS | OPS/REXX | REXX |VS Code extension
It’s no secret that modern development tools such as VS Code, git, and CI/CD pipelines have changed the landscape of software development. These tools provide stable, repeatable, and automatable processes to implement the testing, deployment, and publishing of code.
Marrying the ways we use classic mainframe automation code, such as OPS/REXX, with this modern tooling is a step toward the future of mainframe software development.
Who am I?
I am new to software development, and even newer to the world of mainframe. I’ve been working professionally as a developer now for about eight months. New developers like myself have learned the use of modern tools since we first started to write code, and while one can become quite handy on a greenscreen, walking into a role where you are writing code using them can have a high learning curve and be quite intimidating. I have found it particularly challenging to take a step back from the modern tools I was taught in school.
Enter VS Code — The Modern Editor
The first step toward modernizing legacy automation code is to move the development experience onto the code editor VS Code. Doing this appeals to a new generation of developers that are unfamiliar with ISPF, allows for easy integration with git, and opens up integration with other tools on the VS Code marketplaces.
VS Code is a free, lightweight code editor with many thousands of published extensions for various development integrations and the support of most coding languages. According to the 2023 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, it is also the number one most used code editor in the world by a wide margin.
Modernizing Mainframe Automation Code
OPS/REXX is a variation of the REXX scripting language created for scripting automation rules which are interpreted/processed by the OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation mainframe product. The majority of OPS/REXX users today do their coding on mainframe emulators or terminals, and up until now, no modern editors have support for this flavor of the REXX language. Some time back, my team decided it was time for this status to change, and have recently released the first iteration of the OPS/REXX language support extension for VS Code.
Sure many people use VS Code, but what is so great about this editor that we would take the time to create a support extension for the OPS/REXX language?
That is a fair question, and here are just a few answers:
- Syntax highlighting
- IntelliSense
- Snippets
- Hover insights
- Static error checking
- Integrated source control management
- CI/CD pipeline integration
- And much more…
Mainframe modernization is an ongoing process, which surely stands to benefit new developers as well as longtime users — and begins with the creation and use of modern tools like this extension.
If you would like to test-out this extension and help shape its future direction, it can be downloaded now from the VS Code Marketplace.
