Developing with IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces

IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces is a development environment that provides an in-browser IDE that you can use to code, build, test, debug, and run applications from any machine. It provides a single-click developer workspace and eliminates local environment configuration.

IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces is built on the Red Hat® CodeReady Workspaces project. The core functionality for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces is provided by an open source project called Eclipse Che. IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces uses Kubernetes and containers to provide your team with a consistent, secure, and zero-configuration development environment that interacts with your IBM Z® platform.

IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces provides a modern experience for mainframe software developers working with z/OS applications in the cloud. Powered by the open source projects Zowe™ and Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces, IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces offers an easy, streamlined onboarding process to provide mainframe developers the tools they need. Using container technology and stacks, IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces brings the necessary technology to the task at hand.

By using the IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces stack with custom plug-in and devfile registry support, mainframe developers can now have the all-in-one mainframe development package that includes the following capabilities:

• Rich language support for COBOL, PL/I, HLASM, REXX, and JCL using IBM Z Open Editor

• Connectivity to Z host via a command-line interface or GUI

• Building COBOL, PL/I, and HLASM programs with user build

• Developer environment for teams

• One-click workspaces for Z platform

• Enterprise readiness and built-in security

• Modern editing experience for IBM Z Enterprise languages (COBOL, PL/I, HLASM, REXX, and JCL)

• Interaction with mainframe data sets, USS files, and jobs

• Support for IBM Dependency Based Build

• Support for debugging mainframe applications

What if you, as a developer, could just join a project by getting access and logging on to a website? After you log in, the source code, access to z/OS, and the development environment that is required for maintaining the project would just be there and you can just dive in?

Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces is an open source platform built to realize this vision. It was built to make development environments uniformly accessible for development teams, by providing one-click developer workspaces and eliminating the need for local environment configurations. IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces leverages this for z/OS mainframe application development by using z/OS connectivity features, such as the ones provided by the Zowe open source project.

You can run IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces in the public or private cloud, in an OpenShift Container Platform (OCP). Built for extensibility, IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces allows organizations to create additional enhancements or features tailored to the needs of their development teams.

IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces, which is built on the Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces project, inherits existing components including Keycloak (RH-SSO) and the CodeReady Dashboard. IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces customizes the plug-in and devfile registries to deliver a modern mainframe development experience to software developers.