The following enhancements to COBOL support in the IDE are now available:
- Expanded Copybook View
- The Expanded Copybook View functionality in the editor was added in the 2.2 release and this has been enhanced in 2.2 Update 1 so it is now possible to debug into the expanded copybooks. The functionality includes:
- Stepping inline in the expanded copybook view when debugging - when stepping into or hitting a breakpoint in the copybook, the copybook automatically expands. You can disable this feature from the IDE preferences.
- Showing Pinned Data tips inside the expanded copybook.
- Support for
QuickWatch and
Add Watch inside the expanded copybook.
- Executing some of the debugger commands from the context menu from the expanded copybook view - for example,
Show Next Statement,
Run To Cursor and
Set Next Statement.
Some limitations apply.
- Call Hierarchy
- Visual COBOL now supports the Visual Studio
Call Hierarchy window for analyzing COBOL PERFORM statements.
- Find All References
- The Find All References functionality now works for managed OO COBOL code.
- Navigation
- You can now use
Alt+Shift+Up Arrow (or Down Arrow) to navigate the variables in the editor.
You can use the drop-down types and members to navigate to the different sections (Linkage section, File section etc.) in your source files.
- Project Details Window
- The
Project Details Window now includes columns showing the COBOL dialect of the files and the SQL properties set on them.
- Run-Time Configuration
-
- You can now use the application configuration file (application.config) in native COBOL projects to specify some additional settings such as the search order for called programs, command line handling, or file handling. You can do this from the new
Run-Time Configuration tab.
- When an executable is built using the IDE, the application configuration file is automatically copied to the output folder and is renamed as
<executable-base-name>.exe.mfgcf.
- Samples
- This release includes the following new samples:
- Airport Demo (managed) - shows how to create a COBOL WCF REST service and then use a client application to consume it.
- Airport Demo (native) - a basic lookup program that reads the information about airports from a .dat file and outputs the distance between two airports.
The Sandcastle sample has been updated and now uses Sandcastle Help File Builder v1.9.8.0.
- Solution Explorer
- Support is now available in Solution Explorer for the following features:
- Errors and warnings filters - click the arrow next to the
(Pending Changes Filter) icon in the Solution Explorer toolbar, and either click
Errors Filter or
Errors and Warnings Filter to show the files that result in errors or also cause warnings.
- Searching in Solution Explorer - You can use the search field in Solution Explorer to search for files in your solution. Searching also finds copybooks in the copybook dependency view even if they are not part of any of the projects in the solution.
