Scope of the Support in This Version

This version of the Rocket Enterprise extension has some limitations in the areas listed below.

Note: For full edit, compile, and debug capabilities for COBOL and PL/I applications, install one of Rocket Software's products that support a fully-fledged IDE - Enterprise Developer for Eclipse or Visual Studio.

Compiling and debugging

  • Background parse does not support the inclusion of native preprocessors (including COBSQL, HTMLPP, and PREXML).
  • Compiling and debugging are supported only if you have a licensed version of a Rocket Enterprise Developer product on the same machine. See Installation for details.
  • Compiling of .NET COBOL and JVM COBOL code is supported if the Visual Studio project and/or solution, or the Eclipse project, respectively, are available.
  • Debugging of .NET Framework COBOL code is not supported. Debugging of .NET COBOL code is supported.
  • Debugging of JVM COBOL code on a remote machine is not supported.
  • A problem matcher is not available for the errformat(1) directive.
  • Compiling and debugging are not supported if you use Visual Studio Code as a Web extension in a browser.
  • Reading the COBOL Compiler directives set inside Eclipse COBOL project files (.cobolProj) is not supported.

Editor functionality provided by the COBOL Language Server

  • COBOL Language Server is supported only if you have a licensed version of a Rocket Enterprise Developer product on the same machine. See Installation for details.
  • In native code, COBOL Language Server only parses COBOL files that have been opened. Any workspace-wide features such as the symbol search only return results for files that have been opened.
  • Background parse does not fully support JVM COBOL.
  • A file in the workspace can only have one project association. If multiple projects reference the same file, it can only be associated with the first project that is scanned.
  • Rename Symbol only works for files that have been opened and parsed.
  • Rename Symbol and Find All References do not support symbols defined in copybooks that are referenced using COPY... REPLACING.
  • .cblproj project files created with Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio:
    • Not supported on Linux
    • SDK-style projects are not supported. The Language Server features are not supported in projects that target .NET Core or .NET versions 5 or newer.
    • The preprocessors settings are not supported.
    • There is no NuGet support. NuGet dependencies are not resolved.

Editor functionality provided by the PL/I Language Server

  • The PL/I Language Server is supported only if you have a licensed version of a Rocket Enterprise Developer product on the same machine. See Installation for details.
  • The PL/I Language Server only parses PL/I files that have been opened. Any workspace-wide features such as the symbol search only return results for files that have been opened.
  • A file in the workspace can only have one project association. If multiple projects reference the same file, it can only be associated with the first project that is scanned.
  • Rename Symbol only works for files that have been opened and parsed.
  • .pliproj project files created with Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio are not supported on Linux.
    • The preprocessors settings are not supported.

COBOL notebooks

  • COPY statements do not resolve copybooks in a workspace.
  • The Debug Cell or Step into Cell commands might not work if the cell has not been run first. You can also manually select Notebook: COBOL Notebook Kernel from the Task Picker (Ctrl+Shift+P) to enable debugging.
  • Output is displayed in the debugger output window when debugging rather than in the notebook itself.