Try Z Open Editor in the Red Hat Developer Sandbox

The Developer Sandbox for Red Hat® OpenShift® provides you with 30 days of no-cost access to a shared cluster on OpenShift, an enterprise-grade Kubernetes-based platform. The following tutorial walks you through the steps to sign up for a trial account, deploy your OpenShift cluster with OpenShift Dev Spaces which is installed and ready, and then load a sample workspace with IBM Z® Open Editor.

If you have access to another Red Hat OpenShift cluster with Dev Spaces deployed, you can directly skip to section Create a workspace with the Z Open Editor sample repository. If you have an OpenShift cluster without Dev Spaces deployed, check out the installation guide.

Get a Red Hat Developer Sandbox

1. If you do not have an Red Hat Dev Spaces 3.x deployment go here and sign up for a free account. Check the documents and video on the site for details.
2. Select the "Start your sandbox for free" button.
3. If you have a Red Hat account sign in or create a new account from the Login page.
4. Click the "Get started" button in the Developer Sandbox welcome page.
5. Click the "Launch" button in the Red Hat Dev Spaces box and confirm several authentication prompts.

You are now in the Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces dashboard from which you can create a developer workspace. Select the tile of any of the example stack listed there to start a workspace using the specific technology listed or follow the instructions in the next section to create a workspace with Z Open Editor.

Create a workspace with the Z Open Editor sample repository

A development workspace in Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces requires a so-called devfile that specifies what kind of environment should be created by listing the container image to be used, storage to be mounted, environment variables to be defined, and so on. Such a devfile is typically stored with the source code of the development project in a Git repository. Start a Dev Spaces workspace by pointing to a Git repository and the configuration files in that repository decide what technology stack is to be loaded.

1. Navigate to the Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces dashboard using a Red Hat Developer Sandbox or your own OpenShift Dev Spaces deployment.
2. In the "Import from Git" text field paste the following URL: https://github.com/ibm/zopeneditor-sample/tree/devfile
3. Confirm that you trust the author of this Git repository.
4. Wait for the "Starting workspace" page to load images and complete configuration steps.
5. The browser-based VS Code editor appears and after another trust confirmation dialog, you see the sample files in File Explorer.
6. If you switch to the Extensions view, a set of recommended VS Code extensions are loaded, which includes Z Open Editor. This list of extensions to be loaded automatically is specified in a configuration of the Git repository as well. You find in the file .vscode/extensions.json.
7. After the extensions are installed, you see the following prompt "Zowe™ Explorer's default credentials manager is not supported in your environment." with a "Reload" button. Click the button and wait for the workspace to reappear. If you want to learn about the reason and details about this dialog see Section Managing Secrets.
8. After the editor reloads, the Z Open Editor Welcome page appears.
9. Now you can explore the editor by opening, for example, the file COBOL/SAM1.cbl from the Files Explorer.

Note, that instead of using the dashboard, the developer can quickly open a workspace using a URL bookmark such as this one: https://workspaces.openshift.com/#https://github.com/ibm/zopeneditor-sample/tree/devfile.

Explore the editor

1. You can open the sample programs in COBOL, PL/I, HLASM, REXX, and JCL to try the editor.
2. To try editor features, open section in "Editing program files" such as Making COBOL and PL/I code changes.
3. To try Zowe Explorer, you need access to a public z/OS® system. If you are a student of the IBM Z Xplore program you can use the account provided there. Follow the steps described in Connecting to z/OS with Zowe Explorer walk through to create a team or personal Zowe configuration file.
4. Open a terminal and try Zowe CLI commands as the image comes with many tools preinstalled and configured.

Use your own programs

You can use the sample workspace created with the steps above to edit your own programs by uploading them into the editor, placing them in new folders or replacing the sample programs altogether. You can also create workspaces using your Git repository as long as your Git server is visible to the OpenShift environment you are using.

1. To create a workspace with your own set of programs, copy and modify the .devfile from the Z Open Editor Sample repository.
2. Use the Dev Spaces dashboard to open a workspace with your repository.
3. Review the Dev Spaces User Guide to learn more about how to manage your own environment.