A project's properties hold all the information to build and run your application, such as:
- Build precedence - defines the order in which the directories of files are built.
- Copybook paths - define the order in which locations are searched for copybooks. The search order here takes precedence over the COBCPY environment variable setting. To add copybook paths to this list, specify the paths as linked resources.
- Build settings - include information such as the types of target files to build, the target platform and so on. The build settings occur in the following places:
- Project > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Project Languages Settings. These build settings are for this project . They can be overriden by the currently active build configuration.
- Project > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Build Configuration. You can have multiple build configurations for different build scenarios and swap between them. You choose the configuration you want to use, by setting it as the current active configuration. This then overrides the project language settings.
- Properties on the context menu for a single file. To set this, right-click the COBOL file in the Navigator pane. The settings are specifically for this file and they override the currently active build configuration.
- Run-time configuration - includes options such as the search order for called programs, run-time arguments, run-time tunables, COBOL switches and so on. Again, you can set the configuration in more than one way:
- Project > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Run-time Configuration. These settings apply to the project. They are the defaults and are overridden by any run-time settings in the general run-time configuration (described below)
- Run > Run Configurations. Like build configurations, you can have multiple run configurations and swap between them. These run-time settings override the project settings.
You can also associate a file extension with the content type of a COBOL file, using Window > Preferences > General > Content Types. The COBOL IDE currently provides support for the following content types:
- COBOL Source File - this file is syntax colorized when it is loaded into the COBOL editor, optionally background parsed, and compiled using the COBOL compiler. The default extensions are .cbl and .cob.
- COBOL Copybook - this file is syntax colorized when it is loaded into the COBOL editor, and is optionally background parsed. The default extensions are .cbl and .cpy.
