Accessing Source Code Without a Project

As described elsewhere, Micro Focus recommends that you always use projects and solutions when using Visual COBOL. If you must work without a project, however, this section includes advice on working without a project when you have a large number of files.

You can use the following features to work with your files without a project:

Open Folder

In versions of Visual Studio 2017 and later, Visual COBOL supports opening an entire folder with source files in the editor:

  1. Click File > Open > Folder.
  2. Select the folder that contains your source files and click Select folder.

    Visual Studio shows the folder structure in Solution Explorer and offers limited capabilities for editing the files.

Open standalone files

You can edit, compile and debug individual files in Visual COBOL without a project. To open a file:

  1. Click File > Open > File.

This feature offers a quick way to edit, compile and debug individual files inside Visual Studio. A number of features of the IDE are not available or have limited support with this, though, and it is not possible to persist Compiler directives on the files.

Parent topic: Working with a Large Code Base