The first step in developing COBOL in Eclipse is to create a COBOL project. COBOL projects in Eclipse are like other Eclipse projects where the project is a representation of the source files (with dependencies) and build commands used to create your application or program.
When you first start Visual COBOL, you are presented with Eclipse's Welcome page which contains a few shortcut links for the most common type of applications you might be developing. To start developing COBOL applications, click Open COBOL Perspective. Perspectives are an Eclipse concept. They present the views, menus and options relevant to your activity.
Perspectives are an Eclipse concept. They present the views, menus and options relevant to your activity. The COBOL perspective shows the COBOL Explorer, Outline and Console views, among others. The perspective is customizable, so you can choose your own views. Among the other perspectives you can use while you develop COBOL in Eclipse are the Consolidated Tracing Facility (CTF) and the Debug perspectives.
You create a project using a wizard and the resulting project is displayed in the COBOL Explorer view, from where you can open your source files.
If you need to switch to the COBOL perspective from other perspectives: