Getting Started

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This document was last updated on February 19, 2021.

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.

Verify

Run the samples and see if it works. For Linux:

If you are using a different Cobol compiler than GnuCOBOL, change the scripts/linux_gnucobol_run_tests script accordingly.

./cobolcheck -p ALPHA NUMBERS 

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

Write tests

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