Hello,

I recently tried to use the SCM command line and Jazz Build Engine to manage source code and builds of an existing UNIX-compatible code-base...in the Unix System Services environment on a z/OS mainframe :shock:. The results were a bit unexpected.

One major sticking point is that the SCM command line extracts files encoded as text...in ASCII. Since USS utilities expect text to be EBCDIC encoded it's impossible to edit using any of the text editors available to me. Similar story for attempts to compile source or run checked-in shell or Perl scripts.

Another issue is that since Jazz Builds use the same SCM support, they too extract in ASCII. A bit of a surprise, though, is that ANT builds actually work with this setup. But to clarify, only ant itself works and only with ant scripts encoded in ASCII: Any attempt to run programs other than ant don't do too well.

I can think of a few workarounds, but am wondering if this usage pattern was actually tested and what approaches came out of said testing. In short, how are JBE and SCM intended to be used on USS?

- chris