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Rune Christensen edited this page Jun 14, 2023 · 26 revisions

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This document was last updated on June 8, 2022.

Prerequisites

  • A Java JRE at level 1.8 or above
  • A Cobol compiler (the distribution assumes GnuCOBOL)

Download

Download a Cobol Check distribution archive from the project home page.

Unpack

Distributions are in zip format. Use any zip utility to unpack the file. Here's an example for Linux systems:

cd [your-project-root]
unzip cobol-check-0.1.0.zip

Here's the output from an actual unzip on a Linux system:

neopragma@mint21:~/projects/cobol-check-user$ unzip cobol-check-0.0.0-2.zip 
Archive:  cobol-check-0.0.0-2.zip
   creating: scripts/
  inflating: scripts/linux_gnucobol_run_tests  
  inflating: cobolcheck              
  inflating: config.properties       
   creating: src/
   creating: src/test/
   creating: src/test/cobol/
   creating: src/test/cobol/ALPHA/
  inflating: src/test/cobol/ALPHA/AlphaExpectationsTest  
   creating: src/test/cobol/NUMBERS/
  inflating: src/test/cobol/NUMBERS/SymbolicRelationsTest  
   creating: src/main/
   creating: src/main/cobol/
   creating: src/main/cobol/ALPHA/
  inflating: src/main/cobol/ALPHA/ALPHA.CBL  
   creating: src/main/cobol/NUMBERS/
  inflating: src/main/cobol/NUMBERS/NUMBERS.CBL  
   creating: bin/
  inflating: bin/cobol-check-0.0.0.jar  
neopragma@mint21:~/projects/cobol-check-user$

This creates the Default Directory Structure and places the following files there:

  • The Cobol Check shell script, cobolcheck
  • The Cobol Check configuration file, config.properties
  • The executable jar, bin/cobol-check-[version].jar
  • Sample Cobol programs in src/main/cobol
  • Sample test suites in src/test/cobol
  • A script that Cobol Check uses to compile and run test programs, in scripts/linux_gnucobol_run_tests.

Minimal setup

If you wish to create the smallest Cobol Check setup possible, you may remove both Cobol Check scripts and the script inside scripts/, that is not relevant for your platform. Then to run Cobol Check you can simply write (assuming that the version of Cobol Check is 0.1.0):

Linux and Unix:

java -jar bin/cobol-check-0.1.0.jar -p ALPHA NUMBERS

Windows:

java -jar bin\cobol-check-0.1.0.jar -p ALPHA NUMBERS

Cobol Check will at a later date be able to run without a config.properties-file. This will make Cobol Check run with default configurations. However, all configuration values do not have a default value yet, so Cobol Check currently depends on the file.

You are free to delete the sample programs that comes with Cobol Check, and you may set your config.properties so that your source, test and copybooks are placed inside the src-folder, so you won't need the default folder structure:

application.source.directory = src
application.copybook.directory = src
test.suite.directory = src

Note that you will still need the rest of the configuration options. Above is just showing the three configurations you have to change.

Remember that it still is a requirement, that the test is inside a folder, with the same name as the source program.

Do note that the first time you run Cobol Check, it will generate/output a couple of files. There is currently no way to prevent this, so keep in mind that these files will be added to your setup as well.

Here you see an example of the current minimal setup for Cobol Check on Linux/Unix (not including the generated/outputted files):

Cobol-check
|   config.properties
|         
+---bin
|       cobol-check-0.1.0.jar
|       
+---scripts
|       linux_gnucobol_run_tests
|       
+---src
|       program.CBL
|       copybook.CPY
|
\ program
 |       test.cut

Verify

Run the samples and see if it works.

All platforms

If you are using a different Cobol compiler than GnuCOBOL, change the script under scripts/ for your platform accordingly. For instance, if your employer/client is using Micro Focus products, you might have access to COBOL-IT or a development environment that bundles it. It makes sense to use the same compiler with Cobol Check as you use for Cobol development. In principle, any Cobol compiler that can be invoked from the command line will work.

Linux and Unix

This includes Apple OSX and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Run the samples:

./cobolcheck -p ALPHA NUMBERS

If everything is installed correctly, you will see test results on stdout.

Windows

If you installed GnuCOBOL as described here, then the directory where GnuCOBOL was installed is on your Path. When you open a command-line window to run Cobol Check, you must run the script that sets environment variables in that shell before you run Cobol Check.

Installed in this way, Cobol Check runs under minGW using scripts developed by Keisuke Nishida, Roger While, Ron Norman, Simon Sobbisch, and Edward Hart. They ask users to run GnuCOBOL from within the installation directory. It's a clever, but hacky way to make something run on Windows that was never designed to run on Windows.

To set up Cobol Check to run from within the root directory of your Cobol project, you have to set the same environment variables as they use in their scripts.

Run this first:

[path-to-gnucobol-installation]\set_env.cmd

Note: If you are not admin on your system you need to add the following system environment variable:

COB_CONFIG_DIR = [path-to-gnucobol-installation]\config

You also need to add the following to your Path variable:

COB_CONFIG_DIR = [path-to-gnucobol-installation]\bin

You will have to restart for these changes to take effect

Now run Cobol Check to see if it handles the sample programs properly:

cobolcheck.cmd -p ALPHA NUMBERS

If everything is installed correctly, you will see test results on stdout.

If you see

configuration error 
default.conf: No such file or directory

it means the environment variables have not been set.

Write tests

You can use the samples as a starting point to start building out test suites for your Cobol application.

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