Converting an existing RM/COBOL program to run in
Visual COBOL can be simple or complex, depending on the portability of the syntax and data types used in the program. Generally, the Dialect"RM" Compiler directive is sufficient to allow an RM/COBOL program to compile in
Visual COBOL.
See the section
Converting RM/COBOL Applications for details about converting the application to run under
Visual COBOL.
The additional steps you need to take for applications that include RM/Panels are:
- ADISCTRL
- The
ADISCTRL configuration file controls how the Micro Focus Adis routine handles ACCEPT and DISPLAY statements. It contains a configuration required for applications using RM/Panels syntax.
- The default location for this file is
%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Micro Focus\Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015\etc. If this location is not writable, copy the file to another location, and edit and use that copy in your application.
- The first
ADISCTRL file in the executable path should be set to the predefined configuration
RM-Panels in order for the display and keyboard behaviour to function correctly. This is done by running the
adiscf.exe utility while in the directory of the
ADISCTRL file you plan to use.
Note: ADISCTRL also contains a general
RM2VCOB configuration for modernizing RM/COBOL applications, but it is the
RM-Panels configuration that you must use if your application contains RM/Panels syntax.
- RMP--RUNTIME
- This is a field declared in the
rmpanels.ws copybook that specifies the
runpan2 library. You need to edit this value in the copybook from your RM/COBOL application and ship it with the other converted files for the application.
- RMP--RUNTIME is set to
runpan2 in the original RM/COBOL
rmpanels.ws copybook. In
Visual COBOL, the value needs to identify the library that contains the
runpan2 entry point. On Windows, that is
runpan2.dll (the
.dll extension is required to locate the library file); on UNIX, that is
cobrunpan2 (32-bit) or
cobrunpan264 (64-bit) (do not include the
.so suffix of the library file).
