Running a Container that is to be Debugged

This topic describes how to run a Visual COBOL Build Tools for Windows base image and volume mount an application's executable and debug files so that you can debug the application.

Note: The information in this topic applies to both native COBOL and .NET COBOL applications unless specifically indicated. If you want to use native COBOL in containers, however, Micro Focus recommends using the IDE-based functionality described in Debugging and Running Native COBOL Applications in Containers as it offers an fully-integrated, easy-to-use debugging experience.

When you run the container, you must make sure that the docker run command specifies the following in addition to any parameters that you would normally specify:

For example, the following is a docker run command you could use to run the native COBOL Hello World project supplied as a container demonstration:

docker run -p 6100 --rm 
 --name helloworld-x64-debug 
 -v %CD%\src\bin\x64\Debug:c:\app 
 --workdir c:\app 
 --entrypoint cobdebugremote64 
 -it microfocus/edbuildtools:win_6.0_x64 
 port=6100

The parameters specified in the above docker run command are as follows:

-p 6100
Publishes port number 6100. This must be specified by an EXPOSE command in the Dockerfile that was used to create the image.
--rm
Specifies that the container is to be automatically removed when it finishes running.
--name helloworld-x64-debug
Specifies the name to be used for the container.
-v %CD%\src\bin\x64\Debug:c:\app
Mounts the local folder %CD%\src\bin\x64\Debug into the folder c:\app in the container. %CD% refers to the current directory and can only be used if you run the docker run command from a Windows batch file. If you run the command from the command line you can use the PowerShell automatic variable ${PWD} or specify the current directory in full.
--workdir c:\app
Sets the working directory for the container. This must be the same folder that is specified by the -v parameter.

--entrypoint cobdebugremote64
Specifies the 64-bit cobdebugremote64 module to enable remote debugging. This is only required for native COBOL applications.
-it
Specifies that the container runs interactively.
microfocus/edbuildtools:win_6.0_x64
Specifies the name of the image to run. In this case, this is the 64-bit Windows version of the Enterprise Developer Build Tools for Windows image.
port=6100
A command line parameter for the container.

When the container is running, if the application running is in native COBOL a message such as the following is displayed to indicate that the container is running and cobdebugremote (or cobdebugremote64) is ready to connect for debugging:

Waiting for a connection on machine IP-address/container-name using port port-number.
Press 'Q' to quit.