Cobol Check

Cobol Check provides fine-grained unit testing/checking for Cobol at the same conceptual level of detail as unit testing frameworks for other languages, such as Python, Ruby, C#, and Java.

Thanks!

A big thank you to Vicom Infinity for kindly providing a test z/OS environment for the project!

Immediate needs

As of March 2021 we could use help with:

• review of localized messages by native speakers and creation of additional localized message files

Downloads

Version 0.1.0 pre-release is available!

• Find the download on the project home page on the Neo Pragma site.
• Find general release information in the changelog.
• Find more information about supported functionality on the wiki.

If you want source code, you can clone the repository or download a compressed archive from here.

Why?

The industry is experiencing a resurgence in interest in Cobol, both to support existing applications and to take advantage of the continuing evolution of the zSeries platform. Commercial unit testing tools for Cobol are able to exercise code at the level of a whole load module, but cannot exercise individual Cobol paragraphs in isolation. That limitation means we cannot achieve the same degree of granularity in microtests as we can when working in other languages, such as Java, Kotlin, C#, Python, or Ruby.

Given that capability, we might anticipate some of the same effects on the design of Cobol code as we see in the design of code in other languages, when fine-grained microtesting is used. These include factors like modularity, smaller source units, closer alignment with basic software design guidelines such as separation of concerns and single responsibility, and so forth.

As much of the work in this space will involve support for existing code bases, we might also anticipate that incremental refactoring will become easier once we have a safety net of fine-grained examples in place. We can apply the same techniques we use to improve the design of existing code in other languages.

Installing, Using, Contributing

Please see the wiki for more information.

Target platforms

We want to enable Cobol developers to write and run fine-grained unit checks on as many platforms as are feasible. Please see the list of certified user platform on the wiki.

Related projects

• The original proof-of-concept project: https://github.com/neopragma/cobol-unit-test
• A fork with enhancements to work on zOS, and bug fixes: https://github.com/Rune-Christensen/cobol-unit-test

Governance

This project is part of the Open Mainframe Project.

Reporting Issues

To report a problem or request a feature, please open an issue.