Installing Visual COBOL in an Offline Environment

Visual COBOL is typically installed on a machine which is connected to the internet. This makes it easier for the installers to access and download any prerequisites, and that the Visual COBOL installer validates the required certificates.

If you must work in an offline environment, however, you need to copy all required installers and certificates to the machine on which you are installing. You need the following software:

1. Visual Studio - you need to prepare an offline installation of Visual Studio to transfer to and install on the offline machine. Refer to the MSDN for instructions this. Ensure that you include any prerequisites for Visual COBOL such as "DGML editor", "Data sources and service references", and the Help Viewer.
2. Digital certificates - you need to manually install the following missing certificates. This is because it is not possible to validate the certificates in an offline environment (click here for more details). If the certificates are not present, the product installation fails.
   To prepare the certificates:

   1. Install Visual COBOL 5.0 and the 5.0 Patch Updates you need on a different machine that is connected to the internet.
   2. You then need to export the certificates and import them in the offline machine.
   3. You must install the DigiCert Assured ID Root CA certificate in both Trusted Root CAs and in Intermediate CAs.

   DigiCert Assured ID Root CA       Valid until: 10/Nov/2031 
   Serial #: 0C:E7:E0:E5:17:D8:46:FE:8F:E5:60:FC:1B:F0:30:39 
   Thumbprint: 0563B8630D62D75ABBC8AB1E4BDFB5A899B24D43 
   Demo Sites for Root:  Active Certificate   expired   revoked 
    
   DigiCert SHA2 Assured ID Code Signing CA           Issuer: DigiCert Assured ID Root 
   CA 
   Valid until: 22/Oct/2028 
   Serial #: 04:09:18:1B:5F:D5:BB:66:75:53:43:B5:6F:95:50:08 
   Thumbprint: 92C1588E85AF2201CE7915E8538B492F605B80C6 

3. Visual COBOL 5.0 and, subsequently, the cumulative Patch Updates for it that you want to apply.
4. After this, execute the MFVSIXinstall.exe tool in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Micro Focus\Visual COBOL\vsix\VS15.0.

   This adds the Micro Focus components to the Visual Studio instance.