You Can Now Get IBM Tech Support For VS Code For i
August 11, 2025 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that were on the fence about migrating from Rational Developer for i and adopting VS Code for RPG and COBOL development just received one big reason why they should bite the bullet and make the move: the launch of a new technical support package for Code for i from IBM.
Visual Studio Code is currently the most popular integrated development environment (IDE) on planet Earth, according to multiple measures, such as the Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, which found Microsoft VS Code was used by 76 percent of all respondents, more than twice the usage of the second place IDE, Microsoft’s big boy IDE Visual Studio (weighing in at a hefty 130 GB).
Developers everywhere like that VS Code is Web-based, that it is open source, and that it is free – not to mention that, at just about 100 MB for the Windows or Linux download, that it is rather lightweight, too. But above all, devs appreciate VS Code’s immense flexibility, its imminent configurability, and the ubiquitous extensibility that enables it to support an extremely wide range of languages, extensions, and target platforms – including the IBM i and System Z mainframe platforms and their archaic EBCDIC-encoded languages (from an open systems perspective, anyway), RPG and COBOL.
This is the logo for Code for i.
VS Code has caught on quickly among IBM i developers since Liam Allan launched the group of IBM i extensions under the Code for i package back in 2021, when he was still working as a consultant at Seiden Group (Allan just celebrated his third year at IBM). More than half of IBM i developers were using VS Code (via Code for i) when Fortra ran its survey in late 2024 for the 2025 version of the IBM i Marketplace Study. Considering the ongoing pace of development by the growing Code for i community – including fine-tuning integration with the debugger, the Db2 for i database extension, and the testing extension that’s due out later this year – it wouldn’t be surprising if VS Code has already surpassed Rational Developer for i as the most popular IDE on IBM i. In fact, at this point, it would be surprising if it was not.
And with the introduction of a new Code for i technical support package last month, IBM just gave IBM i devs yet another reason to move to VS Code. IBM made the announcement on July 8 as part of its big launch of Power 11 and the rejiggering of its P20 and P30 software subscriptions.
IBM is adding all sorts of software and services to its subscription offerings to entice IBM i shops to make the move. For instance, it added BRMS, PowerHA SystemMirror, PowerHA Tools, PowerSC, Migrate While Active, and iDoctor software to the entry-level subscription package, dubbed P20 Standard Edition. The high-end P30 Enterprise Edition gets some extra goodies, including the Rational Development Studio for i (RDS, which has the ILE compilers), Db2 Mirror, Red Hat Ansible, and the new VS Code and Code for i support package.
IBM is supporting a range of Code for i extensions as part of its VS Code support package. (Image source: IBM)
Technically called the “IBM i Extensions for VS Code Enterprise Support,” the IBM technical support offering brings support for a group of technologies collectively known as the IBM i Development Pack. The IBM i Development pack includes Code for i itself, the IBM i languages (RPGLE, COBOL, CL, and SQL), the Db2 for IBM i extension, IBM i Renderer, IBM i Project Explorer, Source Orbit, and Code for IBM i Walkthroughs.
IBM i Product Manager Yan Zhuo discussed the significance of the new IBM-backed Code for i technical support package during a recent webinar.
“This is basically saying hey, instead of relying on community support, now we actually have IBM support team,” Zhuo said. “We have Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3, which is our IBM development team. And we’re going to be there answering questions. If you have issues, you can come to us. And so then you can have the confidence and the backing to create and maintain IBM i applications using the latest and greatest technology from the open source and the modern development experiences that comes with Visual Studio Code.”
Source Orbit, if you’re not familiar, is a dependency management tool for VS Code. The offering, which was developed by IBM and released to the open source community in October 2024, helps developers understand their source code by providing a dependency tree that shows how objects are impacted while they’re writing code. IBM i Renderer provides print and file rendering for Code for i users. It was originally developed by Allan’s Halcyon Tech company in October 2022, and is still in preview. IBM i Project Explorer, which was launched two years ago by IBM provides a viewer to manage library lists, variables, object libraries, and include paths, is another IBM i Development Pack component.
The IBM i Extensions for VS Code Enterprise Support package, like the RDS compilers subscription, covers only five users per core, and it’s currently only available through IBM i P30 Enterprise Edition, which costs $24,500 per core per year. However, that will likely change.
“Down the road we would introduce standalone offering so that everybody can purchase that enterprise support, if that’s important to them,” Zhou said.
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I’m sure the use of VS code will zoom once the screen & print visual design is introduced – which has been planned in the future (and I have been waiting for anxiously ever since VS code was available as a replacement for RDi)