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COBOL Explorer View

Visual COBOL now includes the COBOL Explorer view in the Eclipse IDE. This allows you to navigate around COBOL projects in a more useful and convenient way than Eclipse's own Navigator view.

The COBOL Explorer view includes the following features to help you manage your projects:
  • For COBOL Project, Remote Project, and Mainframe Project types, COBOL Explorer adds category folders that automatically group together your project's COBOL programs, copybooks, and output files. (These folders are not physical folders on the disk, but effectively headings for certain file types.)
  • To simplify navigation around your project, you can hide some files that are part of the project, such as the .cobolBuild, .cobolProj, and .project files, and the .settings folder and its content in JVM projects. You do this by opening the view menu, selecting Customize View and choosing from the options.
    Filters
    Choose types of content to hide in COBOL Explorer.
    Option Description
    .*resources Any files of type .* such as .cobolBuild, .cobolProj
    Closed projects Resources in closed projects never display, but you can choose to hide all closed project icons too
    Empty folders inside COBOL categories Folders mapped to the COBOL Programs and Copybooks that contain no COBOL program or copybook files
    Non-COBOL projects Projects of types other than those under Micro Focus COBOL - for example AspectJ, Plug-in, or Update-site projects
    RSE Internal projects Projects generated by the RSE plug-in
    Content
    Choose types of content to show in COBOL Explorer.
    Option Description
    Working Sets Working sets are subsets of workspace resources you can choose to show or perform options on. To define a working set, click Project > Build Working Set > Select Working Set > New.
    COBOL Elements Non-resource types that are COBOL-specific:
    1. x
    2. category folders, including those for COBOL programs and copybooks
    3. icons for the different types of COBOL files.
    4. overlays for build errors and warnings
    5. some context menu items
    Resources COBOL projects, COBOL programs and copybooks. Has effect only if the COBOL Elements option is unchecked.
  • COBOL Explorer helps you fix problems by using icons to identify files and containers that cause build errors and warnings.
    • A file that generates a warning, and any containing folders and categories, is marked with a yellow warning sign. For example:

    • A file that causes an error, and any containing folders and categories, is marked with a cross. In this example the icons indicate the most severe problem is the error caused by Program4.cbl, and the folders are marked with error icons despite Program5.cbl generating a warning:

    • A project that suffers from a dependency error is marked with a red exclamation mark; its contents remain unmarked. In this example the project depends on another project that is closed, causing a build path problem:

Also, the context menus are reorganized and include some additional tasks such as the Determine Directives command.

You access COBOL Explorer in the same way as other Eclipse views, by selecting Window > Show View.

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