Compiling Eclipse Projects

You can use the Micro Focus Enterprise extension to compile COBOL (both native and JVM COBOL) and PL/I source files that include the .cobolBuild or the .pliproj project file created with Enterprise Developer for Eclipse.

The extension auto-generates build tasks for each .cobolBuild file found.

This has the following requirements:

• A licensed version of one of the following products:
  • Micro Focus Enterprise Developer
  • Micro Focus Enterprise Developer Build Tools

  You need to specify the installation location of the Micro Focus product you have as Micro Focus COBOL: Install Location in the Micro Focus Enterprise extension settings.

• Apache Ant must be installed and the path to its bin folder added to the PATH.

If a folder opened in Visual Studio Code contains the .cobolBuild project file, the Micro Focus Enterprise extension will automatically generate a task for compiling the project via Ant. You can manually configure the build task, if required.

To compile COBOL sources:

1. Ensure the folder that contains your sources is opened in Visual Studio Code.
2. Click Terminal > Run Build Task.

   This shows the Task Picker with the supplied build task:

   
   
   
3. Select COBOL: Ant (.cobolBuild) to trigger a build.

   The build output is displayed in the Terminal window. Any errors are underlined with red squiggly lines in the editor.

4. Check the Problems panel for any issues. Double-click any of the rows to navigate to the lines of code in the editor that contain the issue.

Optionally, you can configure the build task as follows:

1. Click Terminal > Configure Tasks.
2. Select COBOL: Ant (.cobolBuild) from the Task Picker.

   This loads the tasks.json file for your sources in the editor.