Running the Docker Demonstration for the Visual COBOL Base Image

The Docker demonstration to create the Visual COBOL base image includes a batch file (bld.bat) to make the process of running the demonstration as easy as possible. This topic lists and describes the parameters that you can specify when running bld.bat.

Note: When using bld.bat to create a base image for Visual COBOL you need to ensure that the relevant installation files and licenses are available in the same folder as bld.bat. These are:
  • The installable executable file for Visual COBOL Build Tools for Windows. This is vcbt_50.exe and is supplied in the Docker demonstration for the Visual COBOL Build Tools for Windows base image.
  • The appropriate license (.mflic) file for Visual COBOL Build Tools for Windows.
  • If you will be including Java support in the image, the relevant executable file to perform the installation of the JDK. You can get this file from your chosen JDK provider.

The command to execute the batch file to run the Docker demonstration for the Visual COBOL base image is as follows:

bld.bat { IacceptEULA [dryrun] [verbose] [nojava] [install-location] |
          rmi                                                        |
          settings }

where the parameters are:

IacceptEULA
Indicates that you accept the Micro Focus End User License Agreement (EULA).

You must specify IacceptEULA to create a base image containing Visual COBOL.

dryrun
Indicates that you do not want bld.bat to run any Docker commands. Use dryrun with the verbose parameter to display the Docker commands without running them.
install-location
Specifies the name of the folder in the image filesystem into which Visual COBOL will be installed. If specified, this must be the last parameter.
nojava
Indicates that you do not want Java to be installed in the base image. By default, the base image includes Java support as provided by the AdoptOpenJDK OpenJDK. You might want to use this if your system already includes a number of different versions of Java and you don't want to introduce another version unnecessarily.
rmi
Indicates that you want to remove any previously-created Visual COBOL base images. Specifying rmi results in the execution of a number of docker rmi --force commands to remove all Visual COBOL base images.
settings
Causes the settings that will be used for various properties of the image to be displayed on-screen. Properties that are displayed include the names of the installable file and the license file for Visual COBOL, the details to be used for the Enterprise Server admin user, and the details to be used for the login image. Specifying settings does not cause an image to be created.
verbose
Causes Docker commands to be displayed on-screen as they are executed.