IBM’s Fall 2024 Code for IBM i Enhancements
November 13, 2024 Alex Woodie
Adoption of Code for i continues to soar among IBM i developers, as they shift from heavy, expensive integrated development environments (IDEs) to lighter, open-source options. With the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i, IBM is making the VS Code plug-in even more useful for RPG and COBOL developers.
Code for IBM i is the brainchild of Liam Allan, the midrange wunderkind with an intense aversion to Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi), IBM’s Java-based flagship IDE for IBM i. As adoption of the VS Code extension grew in the summer of 2022, IBM smartly hired Allan as a software engineer and gave him the resources to continue the buildout of the product, which has been downloaded more than 40,000 times (up from about 25,000 at the end of 2023).
While time is running out to get Code4i version 3.0 delivered before the end of the year (as was Allan’s original plan), he and his team have delivered a lot of good stuff that will benefit users. Development of this product on GitHub is ongoing, of course, but IBM included the Code4i enhancements in its IBM i 7.5 TR4 and 7.4 TR11 updates, we’re including them, too.
According to IBMI’s October 8 7.5 TR5 announcement letter, IBM has helped deliver a number of enhancements in Code4i, including with the Db2 for i Extension (vscode-db2i), which IBM first delivered a year ago. IBM says that the database extension improvements include “notebook support, multiple result sets, and SQL Error Logging Facility (SELF) view integration.”
Code4i also now includes Polish, German, Spanish and Danish, Finnish language translations, better DBCS (double-byte character set) handling, better debug service management, enhanced tooltips, and local workspace compilation for display, physical, and logical files.
The RPGLE code extension, which is part of the IBM i Development Extension Pack, has also been enhanced. According to IBM, it includes a new “rpglint command-line interface.”
The announcement letter also mentions an enhancement to Source Orbit, the dependency management tool created by Allan to improve how IBM i developers (including those working with Code4i and other tools) work with Git. The Source Orbit update brings support for supporting long SQL object names, a refined “ibmi-bob rule generation,” new support for legacy source names, and a new “file change watch mode.”
Other enhancements mentioned in the IBM i Support Page for the TRs include: the ability to compile non-IFS sources from the local workstation; the ability to cancel connecting to system; support for hovering over symbols in SQL; the ability to execute statements from New Nav in VS Code; and new context menus in the Schema Browser.
The Code for IBM i project on GitHub currently has 47 contributors and 284 stars. The software is currently at version 2.13.6, and is distributed via an MIT license. You can install Code for IBM i directly from the extensions view inside of VS Code, or from Visual Studio Marketplace here.
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